Flipping through the New Yorker I come across an advertisement that makes me smile. A young lightly bearded, sitting on the ground in a square can not be identified, flanked by his travel backpack, in short, a backpacker, reading a book on a kindle with an air of gentle pleasure. The effect at first glance it seemed ridiculous: the guy has an air of post-hippie and I think that would be better off in the hands of a paperback book instead of Amazon’s digital reader. A statistic on a British newspaper confirms my impression also from the commercial point of view: the sales of e-books, hitherto rapidly growing in the English-speaking world, Britain now slowing, increased by only 5 per cent in 2013, while those of paper books increased by 11. And sales of kindle, always in England, fell by 26 per cent in the last quarter of this year. In short, while the card appears doomed to gradual extinction for newspapers, for books it is said that the decline is equally inexorable. The advantage of having an entire library on a kindle or a similar reader is obvious; and I personally have taken a step in this direction, giving (to the nineteenth removal of my life) to carry around all my books, which I have bravely undone. Often those books on the shelves of our homes are more like a form of decor (perhaps intellectual). Viva the future and technological advancement. But to read a book on the steps of a square, or on a sunny beach, a handy pocket-sized card is perhaps more appropriate than a tablet. At least for backpackers today. Among a generation or two, I will not dare to make predictions.
No comments:
Post a Comment