Quote:
Originally Posted by Freeshadow
To answer the thread question: No.
For evidence look in a shop or kitchen of your choice. Although we have myriads of powered tools (bread cutting machines, kitchen helpers, mixers in the latter; lathes, dremels, bit drivers and God knows what else in the former) there still are the KISS tools:
screwdrivers, wrenches, files, sandpaper, handsaw, chisel, hammer etc. around. Tools which, when they are broken, are literally broken.
Don't know if there is some engineers' catchy phrase for "As long as there is a simple task to complete there always will be simple tools to do it - if for nothing else, than as fallback."
Same goes for reading/writing: a KISS task. Keep data accessible for eyeball perception as simple as possible. Thus books/notepads will remain or rather evolve into another KISS tool rather than be completely replaced by something too much tech depending.
What the next gen of post-dead-tree might be I don't know. Maybe some 3d-printed, extra sturdy yet very thin foil with the "print" being inside and not on it? cleanable? Maybe not as a book but as a scroll (text marker sized and click-mountable on a frame?) Time will tell.
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The humble screwdriver is an example of a re-purposed tool. It's first use was back in the days of plate armor for knights I understand. Back then very few things were screwed together and the plate armor was one of them. Plate armor reached it's point of being less than useful in battle around 1600 (some 416 yrs ago) with the invention of gunpowder weapons. Back then even things like nails were used for few things (horseshoes being one) as houses were held together via wooden pegs rather than nails. I don't know if the paper book or notebook could be re-purposed in some way in the future but I don't see them vanishing any time soon. People still like to write things down (especially some authors while brainstorming) and of course as others have said not all books translate well to ebook formats. A set of encyclopedias for example wouldn't do well as ebooks due to the size of the file. Nor I think would most reference materials. Fiction yes, but non-fiction no.