I don’t know if you remember, but there was a day when finding an answer meant scouring a book or periodical. Books, as you may recall, are many sheets of paper bound together telling a story or presenting facts. In my day paper books were something to hold, cherish, and pass on to friends. Books fired conversations.
My daughter and I were talking this week about her February vacation goals. She visited the Technology Center in her high school to borrow a book for vacation. Like many, the library in her school has been renamed and books have been replaced by computers.
Why would they replace books with computers? Books, after all, have been the eternal classic medium for rubric. Paper books are easy to flip and certainly made it easy for me to cheat on homework by simply looking back at answers. Displacing books with computers makes no since.
Bound text books have shifted to computer based technologies starting about a decade ago. Publishers claim electronic books are easier to learn from and school districts love them because they’re less expensive. Students like my daughter, however, dislike not being able dance between pages to find information.
I’m in the process of sending a manuscript to be published. During a host of emails with a publisher I was told the only way a new author can be printed on paper is to self-publish or basically pay out of pocket. E-books, I’m told, are far less expensive and draw a wider scope of potential readers. Turns out more people purchase e-books than do paper books at an astonishing ratio of 10:1.
E-book readers are the latest and greatest way to read a book; avoiding paper cuts and all other hazards of paper. I spent a few minutes searching and can’t find the statistic, but I remember reading 2012 e-book reader sales topped 10 million units. Considering electronic books can be downloaded to computers and other electronic devices I imagine a time when books become obsolete.
I just recently ended a relationship with a book hoarder. When asked, she claimed to have read each of approximately 5,000 books in her collection. My attraction was her lack of technology (as well as being cute); however, she explained her resistance to owning electronics. Her argument was the more we support technological growth the faster we destroy history. It’s a wonder our relationship lasted as long as it did.
Companies like Google have been borrowing books from National libraries and digitizing them. Google’s argument is instant availability to anyone at any time. Antagonists argue it removes the inherent freedoms of being able to freely borrow books. Google charges a fee to users to cover the cost of digitally storing media that was once somewhat freely stored on a library stack.
Months ago I called a friend of mine for assistance setting up a portion of one of my stores as a used book and vinyl record collaborative. My vision was to experiment with a dichotomy of new and old and spin off a business called Paper or Plastic. I’ve seen used book and vinyl stores in larger cities and they’ve been relatively successful. After presenting my plan, my friend told me the book industry is failing and suggested I’d be better selling e-book readers.
Ray Bradbury may have been onto something with the destruction of books. Books are rapidly being replaced by digital media because it’s easily portable and less expensive than paper. My daughter was laughing at the idea she was the first to remove a three year old book from her school library. I’ve come to the conclusion if I’m ever published on paper it’s bound to be burned to at least a CD.
(Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. located at 509 Main St. in Gardner. You can text him directly at (978) 413-2840 or visit www.LocalComputerWiz.com.)