by Kristopher Oppegaard

Created on: April 27, 2010

The personal computer, along with the development of the Internet, has become of one the most popular and one of the most useful technological advancements in recent history. Most things that can be done physically can also be done with a computer. Because of this fact, certain markets of business have seen drops in sales, solely due to the convenience of the computer. One of these markets that has seen competition from this technological achievement is books. A book made up of pages is seemingly no match for the computer, which can house thousands upon thousands of e-books (electronic books). But if the book is, in fact, no match for the computer, then why does it still exist? The book is a truly resilient competitor to the e-book, especially considering the fact that thousands of e-books can be stored on a computer hard drive while a few physical books are probably equal in size to your personal computer.

Perhaps to determine if computers will replace books, we should first look at what books themselves replaced. Oh, wait a second. Books didn't replace anything, unless you consider cave paintings or hieroglyphics to be in the same category. Even then, books are the first of their kind and little improvement beyond the printing press has been made to the production of books. The originality and innovation of the book has been nearly perfect since the first one was written thousands of years ago, making it very sturdy to the impact of the recently developed e-book.

The endurance of books is largely due to the level of respect for a book. The book has been the medium of literature for thousands of years and will not be done away with by a new competitor. People are more likely to respect the knowledge of a book and are additionally more likely to respect the reader of a book rather than an e-book. Books have not only earned a place as a medium but can be considered a tradition as well. People, in general, are much more likely to be comfortable with tradition.

Consequently, another factor to the endurance of books is the level of comfort. Rather than sitting at a desk reading from a screen, the reader is free to take their book outside or read in the comfort of their bed. This is certainly possible with a laptop computer, but in this respect, a book is certainly more convenient and won't scald your lap in the process. Not only are people more comfortable with the idea of a book, but we are also more comfortable with the actual physical task of reading from a page rather than a brightly lit screen.

It is impossible to tell if the computer will ever replace books entirely, but for the foreseeable future, books are sure to be the holders of respect and the majority of the literary market. E-books may be the right choice for some but the level of comfort a book represents and provides makes it, at present, an indispensable novelty to many more.

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