I do not consider myself an early adopter of technology but I do recognize change when it is upon us and I am pretty certain that e-readers are here to stay. Simply because of the long term economical viability of a electronic books it is hard to see them going away anytime soon.

When considering children and textbooks or worse yet, college students and the numerous books that they are forced to buy, e-readers start to look pretty attractive. They are made to be durable and long lasting, they can hold thousands of books, numerous other types of files can be viewed, you can take notes, and you can highlight important text.

The quintessential book will never leave us, but they will start to be much fewer and far between. As much as I love books I am ok with this. The many benefits to having an electronic book greatly outweigh the positive of being able to smell and hold a paper book.

For the average student being able to carry numerous books in one small contraption and having the ability to reference them, search them, edit them, and view, notes and important points is very important. College textbooks for a single semester can cost upwards of $500 and they are basically worthless shortly thereafter. If you are able to spend a quarter of that and have the books be much more accessible for the rest of your life, I think that is worth it.

One more point I would like to bring up is the environmental impact of the publishing industry. As you recall paper is made from trees, less paper books fewer trees get cut down. Less toxic dye is used to print the pages and paper mills emit less toxic pollution producing books that end up attracting roaches in someones house sooner or later.

Do your child a favor and introduce them to electronic books sooner than later and allow them to fully appreciate and get the most out of the written word.

What next?

Subscribe to the RSS Feed