Prompt Response 16 – Past, Present and Future

Twenty years ago I was living in Spain. English paperback books kept my brain busy on the subway, and an occasional translated book really tried my Spanish skills. (Relámpagos by Dean Koontz, El Señor de los Anillos by Tolkien, and Yo, Robot by Asimov are examples.) I read late into the night fairly frequently, and I remember reading John Grisham, Michael Crichton, and Tom Clancy while I was there. Also, since I was working with an English speaking school, I would occasionally read kid’s books since they were available in English in the school library. I generally tried to save the beat-up paperbacks for trips on the subway since I needed to be able to put them in my pocket.

There was a time that I did quite a bit of shopping at the used book store. That has slowed down now that I work a regular schedule at the library. Also, I picked up the habit of listening to books in the car and at the house. That surprised me. While I am the computer guy at work and I teach classes on tablets and computers, I do not actually own a tablet or a smart phone. I do have an older e-reader. The thing about it that surprises (and disturbs) me is that I find the text is easier to read in larger sizes. I also like the fact that huge books fit quite nicely into an e-reader. Also, I’ve recently found myself doing less browsing even though I work at the branch. It is much more convenient and more informative to browse online. I’ve also found that I generally like to either read a series or listen to it completely. In other words, if I listen to book 1, I’ll try to listen to all the books in the series. If I read book 1, I’ll read the others. I’m not sure what would happen if I could check out the fancy books that can switch back and forth.

Looking twenty years into the future is difficult. In that period of time, computers should have doubled in speed ten to 13 times. That is to say, they should be 1000 to 8000 times as fast. The memory capacity of a computer should be roughly 2000 times what it is today. The computer should fit into a much smaller space, but there should be the option of having many processors in the same device (which will still be ridiculously small). If prices trend as they have, the price of a computer or tablet should be half what it is today even if the minimum wage doubles.

What will that mean for books? That is difficult to say. At the least, that will mean that my entire branch would fit nicely into the palm of my hand in twenty years. That isn’t just the books – the books, the CDs, and the movies would all fit. That doesn’t mean that I would be able to afford an entire library, but it would all fit. Also, for clarification, the entertainment of twenty years from now will be such that only a selection would fit on the device.

There are a few standard e-book formats, and they have been in use for a few years. However, the format will almost certainly have changed. At some point, the change will probably be fairly major. In about twenty years, we’ve gone from VCR to DVD to Netflix. In the next twenty years, the change from books to e-books will likely be made obsolete and irrelevant by a newer format superior to both. There isn’t anything particularly wrong with them necessarily, but twenty years is a long time. I’m not quite sure what will change, but something will. I’m also not sure what will push the change. My guess is that the change will either come about because of school textbooks or magazines. Both of those sorts of documents translate to digital formats with difficulty. However, both could make use of larger screens, high definition images, highly stylized layouts and regular updates of content. When someone works out how to update the seventh grade US History textbook with (for example) a video of the presidential inaugural address between one day and the next, books will change.

It is possible that books will still be printed twenty years from now. Actually, I find it highly likely that many will be. However, as time goes forward, I suspect that print books will begin to look more and more like a black and white movie. In twenty years, that change may have been complete. There are still occasional black and white movies made. Schindler’s List was nearly black and white, and The Artist was black and white. 

So, yes, I suspect that there will be books printed several decades from now, but in the same way that there are occasionally black and white movies made. Books will be numerous. I'm just not sure what form they will take.