The Future of Books

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I'm taking a class on the History of the Book, and currently, we're going beyond the plain "history" but looking at where all these historical patterns might be leading us.

Here are a few articles that we took up and might be of interest to some of you.

"The Future of Reading" by Stephen Levy (Newsweek)
"The Library in the New Age" by Robert Darnton (The New York Review of Books)

The first one features the perspective of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, hence seems pro the death of books as we know it (meaning, the codex form). The second, by the god of book historians, Robert Darnton, prophesies against the death of the codex, at least for research libraries.

A few quotes I lifted from these articles:

"All texts born digital belong to an endangered species."
"Obsolescence is built into the electronic media."
"Books are the last bastion of analog."

So what do you think? Do you think the book will die in our lifetime?

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