Week 16 Prompt

Week 16 Prompt

Both of our readings this week talk about the culture of reading and the future of the book. So I have two questions for you as readers, pulling on your own experiences and all of the readings we have done over the semester: First, how have reading and books changed since you were a child, for you specifically? Second, talk a little about what you see in the future for reading, books, or publishing - say 20 years from now. Will we read more or less, will our reading become more interactive? What will happen to traditional publishing? This is  a very free-form question, feel free to wildly extrapolate or calmly state facts, as suits your mood!


      How have reading and books changed since I was a child? I was born in 1955 and remember as a child going to the Carnegie Library in Greensburg. Although I remember the main floor of the Carnegie library as very dark - old dark wood floors, small windows placed high, dark furniture, bad lighting, brownish paint - the downstairs addition to the library which housed the children's collection was full of bright lights and bright yellow paint with colorful I decorations on the walls. I was always excited to go there and  browse for my favorite books which were primarily Nancy Drew mysteries and non-fiction and fiction books about animals - cats, dogs, horses, etc. I loved to go home and find a comfortable spot to start reading - I could read all day! I also loved to play "librarian" with neighborhood friends

     Unfortunately, some of the excitement about reading I relished as a child has gone due to commitments and time constraints. I still love to read but my time is so limited. I do like the advances in technology that have taken place in the past few years. I am able to take my phone out of my pocket and read a book about anywhere I want so if I am limited on time, I can still read for a few minutes if that's all I have.

     I believe in twenty years from now it will be easier than ever to read a book. While currently Google Glass is not being used to download books I don't think it will be long before many books will be able to be downloaded on the device (Publishing Technology, 2014). Maybe in twenty years an entire library will be able to be downloaded to a small device like Google Glass and all the user will have to do is say the name of the title and the book, article, song, movie, magazine, etc. and it will pop up on the glass. It freaks me out to think that in twenty years I will be approaching 80 (mentally, I feel like I should be in my thirties!) so I don't know how receptive I will be to new technology by then. I will probably try to learn new things, though. I know I won't forget my excitement as a young girl checking out a Nancy Drew mystery in the old library!

Publishing Technology. (2014). Don't read War & Peace with your Google Glass...                                 yet.ContentForward.Retrieved from http://www.publishingtechnology.com/2014/02/dont-       read-war-peace-with-your-google-glassyet/