In response to Sumit Wagley’s comment on my previous blog “E-books Revolution”, there are few issues I should address and explain my view on the potential extinguishment of physical books.
My previous blog post, E-books Revolution, addressed the possibility for physical books to disappear in the next 5 years considering the rapid growth of eReaders due to its convenience and efficiency. Wagley’s argument is that “In the third world countries, these technological devices haven’t made as big a mark as to replacing the physical books.” He also mentioned that most educational institutes nowadays including elementary schools to universities are still using physical textbooks.
In my opinion, there is actually a possibility for physical books to disappear in the near future, in fact, especially in third world countries. Because the difficulty in distributing physical medium in those third world countries is extremely hard to overcome, it is way easier to distribute eReaders which are loaded with eBooks. For example, as the founder of One Laptop per Child – Nicholas Negroponte mentioned, instead of distributing 10,000 physical books, if each eReader is loaded with 100 eBooks they just need to distribute 100 eReaders in total to reach the same goal.
I can see the possibility of this replacement of physical books happening in the future. Maybe not completely replaced, but at least eReaders will take the majority market in the near future.