Borders CEO Mike Edwards wrote a final farewell to Borders Rewards Members, notifying customers that the book retailer is going out of business after 40 years. Edwards didn’t beat around the bush when it came to his explanation of Borders’ decline. He said the company faced the rise of e-readers, a changing book industry and an overall bad economy, adding, “We put up a great fight, but regrettably, in the end, we weren’t able to overcome these external forces.” Source We are seeing a gradual change now in the US and the West. Books are becoming legacy items and are being replaced by tablets. Even in the education sector, check out this quote from the Huffington Post:
While iPads have rocketed to popularity on many college campuses since Apple Inc. introduced the device in spring 2010, many public secondary schools this fall will move away from textbooks in favor of the lightweight tablet computers. Apple officials say they know of more than 600 districts that have launched what are called “one-to-one” programs, in which at least one classroom of students is getting iPads for each student to use throughout the school day. Nearly two-thirds of them have begun since July, according to Apple. SourceI was saying to my wife that our two year old (who is already playing with our Ipads) may not really have to ever read books in print and may look at them in fascination. Scary. I remember when I used to read books but my Ipad changed that. In 2012, the tablet wars between Windows 8, Amazon, the Ipad and Android tablets will probably be the nail in the coffin of print media. Sad but true.]]>
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Sad but inevitable.
But it will take time.
This is very sad indeed.
If even i am a computer science engineer and a technology addict, i find very painful that things like this happen. Especially as the alternative as the behavior main actors of the replacant of books are worrying as their main goal is to push their customers in locked ecosystem.
I am not a great supporter of open source but i hope that open alternative to the alike of iPad and Kindle become available and hopefully dominant.
However my biggest hope is that company producing true books stay alive as long as possible as there is sometime nothing better than to read a true book.
Not forgetting that you are the true owner of those books while you are not sure with a company like Apple to be the true owner of the items you buy or more likely “borrow” from their walled garden.
“””Apple officials say they know of more than 600 districts that have launched what are called “one-to-one” programs, in which at least one classroom of students is getting iPads for each student to use throughout the school day.””” THAT WOULD BE COOL.WISH IF THAT HAPPENED IN MY SCHOOL………