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What an interesting segment it was! So interesting that I couldn't wait to return home and place an order for the book. I added another book to the order. The two books will reach my doorstep in a week, and just in time for the winter break.
I wonder, however, for how long books will continue to be printed. Consider music, for instance. It is mostly streamed. When was the last time you bought music as a tangible CD or vinyl? They don't even sell cassette tapes anymore, right?
I wonder, however, for how long books will continue to be printed. Consider music, for instance. It is mostly streamed. When was the last time you bought music as a tangible CD or vinyl? They don't even sell cassette tapes anymore, right?
Even now, quite a few purchase the e-version of books instead of the bound paper. For how long will books continue to be printed on paper?
An even more troubling question is this: Will books be around?
Book maybe dead by 2039, the futuristic commentary argues.
How long did it take for vinyl to be replaced by tapes. And then tapes by CDs. How long did CDs continue to sell?
It is absolutely fascinating that printed books have survived this long. Why 2039 for that commentary?
In 1439, an eccentric German goldsmith cast the Latin alphabet in lead, smeared the letters with oil-based ink and squashed them beneath a wine press. Johannes Gutenberg hadn’t invented the ink, the paper, the press or the alphabet, but by combining their powers, he built the first printing press and printed the first mass-produced book: a 1,200-page Bible printed on vellum and bound in pigskin.
The rest was history.
Soon, even books will become history in the coming "post-book world"? Of course, rumors of books ending have been spread for a while. "Until now. Or more accurately, until 2031, when the Verse arrived, and humanity discovered a new way to tell its stories."
As troubling as the commentary is, it seems entirely plausible. If video killed the radio star, virtual reality (VR) killed the book authors:
By the mid-’20s, V.R. was sleeker and cheaper, but still posed no danger to Cinemark or Barnes & Noble (both of which declared bankruptcy in 2036). But the rise of cheap neural threads led to the first generation of V.R. implants, and in 2031 Google’s Daydreamer, Netflix’s ReelLife and Microsoft’s much-mocked Awegment were joined by Amazon’s Universal Experience, popularly known as the Verse.
What a clever piece of writing there, right? Can't you already see those brand names?
The author makes an important point that it was never about the books per se.
"The stories." That's what the books were about.
And stories existed long before 1439. Stories are shape-shifters, infinite and immortal: They’ve been painted on the walls of Chauvet Cave and pressed into clay tablets; sung by griots in the streets of Old Mali and cut into the Peruvian desert; danced and drummed and whispered, spun like spider-silk across the Atlantic and painted on the undersides of overpasses. In the context of human history, the book was nothing but a format, a brief technological quirk in the history of human storytelling, younger than theater but older than soap operas.
Read the entire commentary. Maybe you will welcome that future.
As for me, 2039 neatly coincides with another landmark, and I hope to live with books as we know them!
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