What is the future of books? What would a bookless future hold for generations to come?

Nicole: What is the future of books? What would a bookless future hold for generations to come?
With advances in technology, electronic books and audio books are gaining popularity. But these do not offer the ‘feel’ of curling up with a good book. They also limit the audience to only those that have acess to a computer/internet.
Can traditional books and the world of computer text live in harmony and coincide with each other? Will books become obsolete?
What would a bookless future hold for generations to come?
Thank you in advance!

Answers and Views:

Answer by Joseph G
Well, the book has been around about 500 years, so I doubt it is going anywhere.

Audio would seem to be the way to go, but there is a problem. There is something you can do with a book or screen that you can’t do with sound…skim.

When we read, we can glance over words pretty quickly. Taht is why it deosn’t raelly mtater how bad yuor seplinlg is. Your brain can just quickly scan a pile of letters and make sense of them.

This allows you to just skim over a book until to find the relavent information.

That is something you can’t do with an audio file.

I think that one day there will be an ‘electric book’, like the one amazon is trying to sell, but reading isn’t going anywhere.

Joe

Answer by Alt!87
Good question. I’m 20 and i feel like authentic reading is vanishing from day to day in a world that gets everyday more technological. I can say that I miss that ‘feeling’ u talk about, the feeling you got in reading and getting involved in the story of a book. I mean, just passing say, 1 hour in the day sitting on your couch and reading a good book, that’s what I miss. Technology and INTERNET take credits for that, they got too addictive I think and the attraction towards them gets bigger everyday. But I still can find me some time, to sit down, calm my nerves and read a good story or whatever. What worries me is that I might be doing it less and less. And as for the generations, a bookless future, based on technology, digital and internet, makes it a commercial/materialistic/superficial world!