The inevitable end of printed media

Originally Posted by RacinReaver

Textbooks are the one thing I can see having a hard time making this jump. While I do use books.google a bit, generally if I'm going to do any sort of serious reading I head over to the library to pick up a copy. it's also more convenient since I can spread out 3-4 books on my desk and it only costs me the price of the book. With e-readers I'd need to have 3+ e-readers all loaded up with the stuff I want and being sure not to accidentally drop them on the floor since they're so much more fragile than a real book.

I'm cool with things like academic journals going all electric since nobody really reads them cover to cover, and it's a lot more efficient (economically and ecologically) to just print out the handful of pages you want to read.

Interestingly enough, there is a school (I forgot which one and can't be arsed to find the article at the moment) that is giving students eBooks on flash drives in place of textbooks. They're doing this in elementary to kind of gear them for a change like this so that they don't have to adapt to change, they can just be ready for it. Its cheaper on the schools because all the school has to do is just format the flash drive at the end of the term and put the new ones on. Plus it allows for updating textbooks to higher editions more efficiently, instead of sticking with an edition that is 5+ years old because its too expensive to update, or the school feels like its a waste to spend a ton of money on a book that'll only last a year.

I think printed text will still exist for books in general, at least while our generation is alive, just because we're used to it and will slowly deny change. However, with the next generation of youths and the fact that they're starting younger and younger with electronic print, we'll start to see more and more print phasing out, I think.

Additional Spam:

Originally Posted by DieSeLFueLeD

I fucking love used books. If all books went digital, especially textbooks, students would go even further into debt or they'd have to risk fines to pirate the latest edition.

I'm curious how a student would go more into debt with eBooks over physical copies, when publishing companies would save money and thus be able to lower pricing on books in electronic form

How ya doing, buddy?