Yes, Floam, you are making a post.
So get on with it.
(What's this font? I like this font. It doesn't tell me. What are you, O elusive font of blogspot?)
Hmm. Well in any case, you certainly are not a bad font.
Well, I'm writing this, still in my jammies, with my laptop on my tummy, and a kitty on my toes. This is probably (Ooh, Autosave) quite a change to how things were written some hundreds of years ago (probably, Floam?) Okay, definitely.
From cavescratching, to heiroglyphs, to quill and paper, pen and paper, typewriters, computers, and now, I could even be writing this from my iPod. Writing has transgressed to digital. This is accepted.
But what do people think about digitalised reading?
It's thought that physical paper books could become obselete due to things such as the Kindle, and whatever the other one is called (you've really researched this well, Floam). Though I don't own a Kindle (capitalised? Kindle or kindle?), I am guilty of having a digital subscription to a beading magazine I regularly read. The stack of magazines under my bookcase is going to not get any bigger, as all my new issues are strictly on the internet.
Is this a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Is it just change?
If paper books become obselete, will people unable to afford items such as the Kindle go without reading material? And then if literature is only available to those who can afford it, will a good knowledge of books and reading just become something for the elite?
What say you?
I don't know... I'm not a fan of the "paper books becoming obsolete" idea. I hate reading on a computer screen. I used to read novel-sized fanfictions on my laptop for hours at a time, and it made my eyes hurt like crazy. I'd much rather lay on my bed and flip through pages of a book than hold up one of those tiny Kindles in front of my face. Despite that, I don't think the digital reading movement is altogether bad. For magazine articles or newspapers, I wouldn't mind using a laptop or Kindle to read. It saves valuable natural resources. But for 100,000 word books... hell no. Because of that, I don't think paper books will ever be completely eradicated... at least not any time soon.
ReplyDeleteSeems like a dumb idea to me. I mean, I don't think staring at a screen all the time is good for a person and you are right about it meaning that it will become less easy for people who can't afford the whatsamagiggy to read. Yeah...also there is the whole threat that books are just going to become like music and movies and people will just start illegally downloading them and then the whole market for literature will be flushed down the potty. Yay, internet, thanks for that. Unfortunately, the people who can make money off of digitalizing things (without being the ones who write/make the products) don't really care what it does to those who work hard to produce a good product. Curses.
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