Papyrus and parchment scrolls replaced words chipped into stone. Later, sheets of paper made from plant fibers (often linen) were bound into hand-written books, and these replaced the scrolls. Printed books on rag- and wood-pulp paper replaced those written by hand, with each page individually stamped in a press, starting in the 15th century, and by the early 1800s steam-powered rotary printing presses were churning out millions of pages a day on cheap paper making newspapers and popular fiction available to more people than ever. Today, while the paper-based print industry is still going strong, there are some problems with this procedure. For example, the raw materials used in making paper are becoming scarce, and a new source besides wood pulp needs to be found. Recycling paper helps conserve the forests, but often adds harmful chemicals to the environment. Synthetic paper materials might be the answer, but anything that’s based on petrochemicals has its own set of problems.
Some people think that the answer is e-books. After all, they don’t use up any physical materials for paper or ink, and once an e-book is created, it’s instantly available to billions of people around the world. That’s definitely true, but we can’t forget the cost of the materials used to create the e-readers and computers that those billions of people are using to access the book, or the electricity used to power those devices. It’s not a simple solution, and much research is going on into ways to find a sustainable method of making information available to as many people as possible, at the lowest possible cost – both in terms of price and of the environment.
For now, it’s obvious that e-books are becoming more popular every day. Recent studies have shown that at least one in five people use electronic devices to do their reading, although most of the people who read e-books also read print books. The convenience and availability of e-books makes e-reader users more likely to be reading at any given time, and people using e-readers generally read more books in a year than others. The only time people seem to consistently prefer print books is when they’re reading to their children, though this might change in the future as the devices improve to be easier for kids to use, with better graphic display. Changes in technology will continue to affect how, and what, people read. The next evolution for books might be as far advanced from our current e-book format as those e-books are from hand-written scrolls!
What format do you prefer: e-books or print books? Why?
