Technology, Entertainment, and the Rise of the Internet

We all know that our advances in technology -and our growing dependence on the internet- have drastically changed the way we find entertainment. Both the music and film industries have seen giant movements in the way music is produced and shared. Today, anyone can go on the internet and usually find what they're looking for- and it doesn't have to come at a price. Torrent websites/clients and other file sharing programs have made it easy for people to download movies, music, games...just about anything, for free. But, if doing stuff legally is more of someone's thing, he or she can also purchase what they want in a digital format, like mp3s on iTunes.

So what about one of the oldest sources of entertainment...books? Books are also seeing a "2.0" kind of future, as mentioned in this article: "Books are being pushed aside for digital learning centers and gaming areas. 'Loud rooms' that promote public discourse and group projects are taking over the bookish quiet. Hipster staffers who blog, chat on Twitter and care little about the Dewey Decimal System are edging out old-school librarians."

I love listening to vinyl (a gramophone record). Not only are most of my favorite pieces of music/albums from the 1960s & '70s, but the sometimes scratchy, crackly, vintage sound can give the music authenticity, and shows the listener how it was originally played by people (which I think is wicked cool). Vinyl has become somewhat of a trendy kind of thing nowadays, where there are younger people such as myself wanting to "bring back" an old way of doing something; there are also many independent artists who release their albums (LPs!) on vinyl in addition to a compact disc to keep with the trend. Now, I also love reading BOOKS, too. Reading something on a screen is okay, but it's definitely not something I like to do for hours on end. So I'm curious...will books phase out like a gramophone record? Will the Kindle become the new iPod? What will happen to publishing companies? Personally, I would be devastated if books almost became non-existent. I don't see it happening for a while...but the possibility is always there.

"The future of libraries, with our without books." John D. Sutter. CNN, 2009. Web. 7 Sept. 2009.