Is This the Future of Reading Books?

Software is eating the world. It's also eating the book.

For years, traditional book publishers have hoped that standalone e-readers — Kindles, Nooks, and the like — would be their salvation, replacing paper-and-ink books as the diversion of choice for a new generation of readers. But several new data points suggest that's not happening. In fact, it seems clearer than ever that the future of reading isn't on reading devices at all. 

It's on your phone.

Is this bad news for books?

Article by Kevin Roose from nymag.com (June 27, 2014)

How Do you Plug in a Book?

Some days, I feel like this should be mandatory training for students.  I had students from a grade student class who, in all seriousness, didn't know what an encyclopedia was nor the vaguest concept of how it was arranged. After a demonstration I kept thinking, but you know how to count and the alphabet, HOW are you not understanding this?  In the end, I THINK I got through to them by explaining that it was a really, really big book that was broken into chapters so that someone could lift it.   If the power ever goes out during a research project, I will be seen as a genius for possessing the ability to find information in paper form.  Until then, I have a pretty, 28 volume paperweight.  With pictures.