Welcome to the Future

It’s hard to make assumptions about the future of the book industry because of the way that things are already changing. Twenty years ago, who could have foreseen that people would be reading on book sized electric screens instead of on paper. If you told me 10 years ago that 2009 would be the year of the ebook, I would have told you to go back to the Brave New World.

There has long since been an obsession with futurism in literature. As time goes by, some proposed futures begin to look comical. The attendees of the world’s fair saw countless inventions that were going to revolutionize this and streamline that. We have always been a little obsessed with what we think might save us some time. So, perhaps a lot of people wrote e-readers off as blue ribbon ideas and nothing more. But it seems that this particular idea of the future is going to stick around the present for a little while.

While I don’t have any idea what we will be reading on, I do have to say that we seem to be on the crux of a reading revolution. Since the popularity of Kindle and the like are on the rise, book sales for those particular devices have sky rocketed. Statistics so far say that people are buying more books on their Kindles than they ever bought in analog form. If we presuppose that this means they are actually reading them, then e-reading devices are great for literacy.

For people like me though, the physical book object is a big part of the reading experience. Since we are also on the threshold of what is shaping up to be a green revolution, I think that there is going to be a change in the way we perceive paper. Analog readers like the tactile quality of the book at hand, but with the way our planet seems to be rejecting our old ways, I think there is going to have to be some sort of new paper. The book Cradle to Cradle is a study in the cradle-to-cradle method of design. It is completely recycled and recyclable. It is made of a plasticized “paper” that just might be the next big thing in books.

To be honest, I don’t know what the future of the book looks like, but I am sure as hell going to stick around for the adventure.