The Harry Potter series has become a worldwide phenomenon over the years. When it first became a hit, everyone was trying to get his hands on the books as fast as they could. Nowadays, most people would rush around to buy the e-book which stands for electronic book. They are also known as digital books. E-books and their companions, e-readers, are on the rise. Many nation wide companies have come out with their own versions of an e-reader. Barnes and Noble created the Nook. Amazon has the Kindle; Sony got in on the action as well. I’ll admit I did want one at first but mainly just for the ecological nature of it. Buying books digitally does helps save paper. From July 4, 2006 to August 4, 2009, 200 million free e-books were downloaded from Project Gutenburg and World eBook Fair. If these e-books had been bought in paper the amount of trees used would be around 3,200,000!
I was at the library one day and overheard the librarians talking with my mother. They were discussing the fact that in the last couple of years the number of movie and CD checkouts exceeded the book checkouts greatly. Also that more and more people were using e-readers instead of libraries. They said that borrowing books from the library would soon be obsolete. Being a book lover myself, this made me sad although I couldn’t help but agree with her. The ease of being able to carry one device that can store hundreds of books is a lot easier than carrying a humongous stack of actual books.
Of course, e-readers are not just for reading. The ones that I have seen have also had the capabilities to surf the internet, act as an iPod, drawing applications, and more. All of the features that they keep coming out with are turning e-readers into miniature iPads. While these features have many people scrambling to obtain an e-reader, I’m left to wonder if book stores will eventually stop selling printed books and only offer digital ones. I cringe at the thought. E-books and e-readers are very ingenious, but I prefer to hold a book and turn the page myself.
Books and e-readers are not the only thing I’m writing about. Not only are printed books slowly dying, but so is the way we communicate through writing. Back before the internet or computers most people wrote letters when they wanted to communicate with friends and family. Now when we want to do this, we jump onto the computer and pull up our e-mail or Facebook. When we want to write a story or an essay, we go to the computer and open up Word.
I understand that as the world has another birthday, our knowledge increases and we create new, better, and more efficient technology. Yet, I can’t help but sigh and look back at what once was. So with a slump in my shoulders and a twinge in my heart, I say, “Goodbye pencil. Hello keyboard.”
