April 6, 2007 6:56 PM
An interesting question...
Hi! I'm back again after a long period of absence (oops!).
A few days ago, my english teacher gave us an interesting article from March 2007's edition of "the economist". In it, the article explained how companies such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Yahoo amongst others have been scanning books onto the internet in an effort to create an electronic book archive. Google has been estimated to "digitize" about 3,000 books per day. The article went on to pose such questions as " What is the future of books?" and "who would read digitalized books?". An overlaying question, however, was "what exactly ARE books?". One thinks of a book as a material thing, a set of pages bound together. The merriam-webster dictionary defines a book as "a set of written, printed, or blank sheets bound together into a volume". Yet it also goes on to define it as "something that yields knowledge or understanding". Can something written on the internet be considered a book, then? According to the article, in the future people will be able to publish their writings on the internet. Are those writings still considered books even if they don't have a publisher or an editor, yet they yield some form of understanding or entertainment? And what will happen to fiction novels? While I admit it would be convenient to save a trip to the bookstore and some money, what will happen to publishing companies? Businesses such as barne's and nobles and hastings in addition to libraries would see a diminish in the amount of books people read/check out. Let's not be exaggerated, though. Books will not disappear over the next 100 years, and people aren't just going to stop going to libraries and buying books. But the article still hits on a few questions (what are classes going to be like in the future, with the new technology of "ebooks" available?) and makes me wonder what comes next (first ipods, then ebooks, then....?).
Hopefully you find this question interesting too, and will forgive me for boring you a little with a topic that is a little bit serious. =)
Until Later!
Armine
Posted by at April 6, 2007 6:56 PM