Week 16 Prompt - The Future of Books

When I was a child, I loved to read and be read to. I used to crave a rainy day where I wasn’t forced to go outside and play so I could sit inside all day and snuggle up with a book. I would have to say that hasn’t really changed much for me as an adult. However, what I read and how I read it has. Now I don’t just read print books, I read ebooks and emagazines and I listen to audio books. I also read blogs and files on my tablet that could be constituted as novellas due to their length. This is how reading has changed for me. I still love a print book but I am not opposed to reading on a device and do.

Technology has also given the world so much more access to communication that reading has become more group related with websites such as GoodReads where you can read books together online, archive your books, find more good books to read by reading other people’s book lists and reviews and just talking with others about reading. When I was young (and even now) when I read a book that I loved, I really didn’t have anyone to talk about it with, now I can just hop on the internet and find tons of people who share a love of reading. I think this may be the most important change for me since childhood.

I think because so much has changed so quickly over the last decade or two, it is hard to imagine what may happen in the future. There are so many people in the world that still don’t have the internet or devices, not to mention people who do have devices but are either struggling to get up to date or don’t know how to use the device to check out a book or read online. I think it will take the world awhile to catch up. But who knows, who saw the internet coming and knew it would change the world as we know it? Honestly, I believe one of two things will happen; either we will have something crazy like chips mounted in our brains to receive the internet directly to our brain so devices will be obsolete or we will finally decide that all this information and devices and distraction overload  is causing us more harm than good and there will be a movement to move away from online books, games, movies, etc, etc, etc and get back to a simpler way of enjoying ourselves and get back to the print book because there aren’t any distractions. I do think we will strive to have even more “things” to play with until we finally can’t take it anymore and get burnt out but I also see the movement to move away from these things already starting; people are realizing their time on their devices is overtaking their time with their families, etc. I also believe we have too much at our fingertips with books, you can get them anywhere, anytime and it’s too much. People can’t make decisions about what book to read anymore because there are too many choices and devices to get them on and access to retrieve them 24/7. I definitely have book ADD, I feel like when I’m reading a book, there are so many others out there I want to read that I get anxious because I’m not reading those other books, too. But this is our world now and we’ll see what happens .

I think I just wildly extrapolated!