Quote:
Originally Posted by Ransom
Anyone who thinks hard copy books are EVER going away ought to have their silly head examined. Most of the people I know in the real world that have an e-reader only use it for reading older fictional works that they can download for free, and it's usually just light reading material. Any book that they really care about they will buy in hard copy.
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I actually used mine this last semester to do nearly all of my reading for a philosophy course- including downloading academic articles and lecture notes. That meant time spent in the bus or waiting around could be used for study time. I like having some academic books in hard copy because they last so well and look good on my bookshelves! But who really needs to keep some of that research stuff that you needed to write an essay? I just archive it in case I need it further on in the course and delete it from my ereader.
You are right in saying paper books won't go away, but there will be less and less of them produced each year (how many vinyl records are still made?).
I had this conversation with some friends the other day and it seemed to me that they could only see it as a "paper vs electronics" issue. It's not, it is a really radical change in the way we can all access literary material. It doesn't matter where you live, all those books are now available. When the printing press first started producing mass made books there were many who thought this would be "dangerous" because even the masses could read! They were right - within a 100 years or so Europe had changed radically, kings were out, religion had changed, society had changed.