The question to think about is what does the future look like for reading texts? With the new digital media age growing and coming on fast, reading an actual book is in the past. Everything is online.
A great example of this is a research project that I am doing. I had to find many sources and a lot of them were books. I looked them up on my college’s library website, and almost all of them were available online. Soon everything will be a ebook and libraries will go out of business except for the ancient texts of course. Another example of how digital texts are becoming a more popular is newspapers and magazines being easily read and delivered online. Many newspaper companies are going to soon go out of business because of the news and information that is posted free online.
Although I am specifically referring to texts going online, when it comes to engaged online texts I don’t believe they will be something that people really will adapt to so soon. They may adapt to them over a longer period of time, but for now it won’t be some that catches on for a while. It can be very confusing and hard to understand. It can be hard to navigate. The positive about it is how great it can be for education purposes. They are definitely what we should be looking forward to in the long time future, but for now we can easily still have access to normal books and ebooks and not have to worry about the integration of videos, photos, and text all in one, because for many of us that can be confusing. It is like the generations before us not really understanding how to text and use computers.
The world is changing as we [read]!
I agree with you that there is a shift from information found in books to information found online, however I do not think that books are going to become obsolete. In my opinion, there are a lot of people who would prefer to have a paper back book than read the same thing online. I definitely enjoy having easy access to articles and information online, however I like having paper back books that I can write on and highlight. Also, certain devices cannot be taken everywhere. When I go on vacation and am headed to the beach, I am not going to be taking my iPad with me. However, I would definitely take a book to the beach because it is not easily breakable and does not cost 200 dollars.