The other day my fourteen year old son was lamenting that his favorite manga magazine was going to discontinue its printed version. He hates reading things electronically. It might have something to do with a sensory disorder that he has or maybe it's just a preference to hold something tangible. Nevertheless, he was rather bummed, and asked me if all books would be sold that way in the future.
I assured him paperbacks would never go away until they got rid of bathtubs.
Don't know about you, but I think one of the great joys in life is a hot bath, a cup of tea and a good romance novel - all at the same time. I don't think the manufacturers recommend taking electronic readers into the tub with you.
Perhaps, someday, they will do away with bathtubs. At one point, I think my son was leading the charge for this. In our fast paced society, it's possible that people will replace bathtubs with showers. Or, we may someday enter the sci fi world where you step into a plexiglass tube that blows some sort of electrostatically charge particle stream at you to clean your skin and clothes at the same time. (I'm not certain that's what's happening in the sci fi films, but that's always been my impression.)
Still, I think it would be shame to get rid of either bathtubs or printed books. To me, it feels like a surrender of our humanity.
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