Future Of Books Is Ending

    • Shria Seth Class X, Venkateshwar Global School, Delhi
    • Publish Date: Nov 12 2016 4:07PM
    • |
    • Updated Date: Nov 13 2016 4:55PM
Future Of Books Is Ending

The act of reading as we know it, is dying.   

Like me, you are probably someone who grew up on a healthy diet of Harry Potter, Nancy Drew, Sherlock, Amelia and pretty much every other book that was around that you could get my hands on. There are thousands like us but we (the ones who are read for pleasure) are a dying species. The news shouldn't surprise or sadden. I felt this even before I read about a recent study that confirmed it. Here are the numbers...

- 28 per cent of the respondents (from the study) had not read a book at all in the past year; 

- 25 per cent had read between one and five books; 

- 15 percent read between six and ten books;

- 20 percent read between 11 and 50;

- and a measly eight percent had read over 50 books.

It is evident that reading books for pleasure, as a hobby or as a manifestation of passion is well, dying.

But the question is...(and I’m not exempting myself from it)

Why do we people, who once upon a time, wanted nothing more than to read and read a lot, aren’t reading books anymore? Aren't we the product of the digital revolution with access to great content that can come from anywhere around. But instead of reading all that great content, why are we liking, posting, commenting, trolling, hating, and loving more pictures than words. Posting a picture of a book is not really reading it. I don't mean to sound like a grumpy old grandma who is here to tell you that technology is evil. I love it because it has increased my access to such great stories. And yet, the decline in people’s reading habit (more often than not) is traced back to technology. I don't care what medium you use to read, but why you (and me and we) aren’t reading like there is no tomorrow, discussing stories and debating over genres and Shakespeare. 

When was the last time that you picked up a newspaper and went through the entire thing top to bottom?
When was the last time you read the article your friend posted instead of liking it?
When was the last time you had a conversation without checking your phone?
When was the last time you gifted someone an actual book?

You probably don’t, because you read it online. In 25 years the digital revolution will bring about the end of paper books. So why aren't we stocking up for the inevitable. Our generation will be the last possibly to have read from an actual book.
This increase of  E-books and E-publishing will mean the end of another species: the writer.  The digital revolution won’t open up a new era of creativity like what we see now (and I hope I'm wrong about this). There will just be more E-books. EBooks that any kid off the street can write and be done with it. And guess what, the less we read, the less we will write and the less we write, the lesser number of individual voices we will hear. 

Someday the only books we will see are images of them as a wallpaper.   

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Comments

Aishwarya Iyer Deens Academy

What you say is very true Shria. Technology has become so advanced that no one has time for books. I am a great fan of books and whenever I ask someone if they have a particular book which they could lend, they are always like, Yes, I do, but on my I Pad. Books have that special feeling that electronic gadgets do not give and even though we should advacne technologically, books cannot and should not be replaced.

V.Ananya D.A.V. Public School

Completely right . The most depressing fact is that most of the parents and teachers see reading novels as a distraction for their children and students , respectively.They don''t understand the importance of reading books other than text books . This is not the right attitude .

Palaash Agarwal DELHI PUBLIC SCHOOL ROHINI

I agree that books is a species becoming extinct, because they have many words which define a feeling. They can''t be replaced by E books. Even I have observed that.The books cannot be replaced by this new gadget revolution which forces us to buy kindles, or E waste.You would like to have a collection of books on your shelf instead of idolizing the e books.

Palaash Agarwal DELHI PUBLIC SCHOOL ROHINI

I agree that books is a species becoming extinct, because they have many words which define a feeling. They can''t be replaced by E books. Even I have observed that.The books cannot be replaced by this new gadget revolution which forces us to buy kindles, or E waste.You would like to have a collection of books on your shelf instead of idolizing the e books.

Hitika Saini LANCERS CONVENT SCHOOL

What you wrote is partially correct, I agree with most of it but not the part that we, the hardcovers and paperback book readers are a dying specie. The interest of reading books for pleasure has been in humans since ancient times and probably will go on till the end of time. The 8% who read 50+ books annually believe in hardcovers and will always prefer them more and so will majority of the people who read 6-50 books. The actual books are always here to stay

Ambuja Rani Ryan International School

About 20 percent of Indians prefer e books to paper bound ones but I still prefer the paper ones,they are better to our eyes.

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