Johannes Gutenberg’s printing innovations in 1450 democratized information dissemination. What started out as the production of religious encyclicals for religious institutions soon branched out into scientific papers some of which were condemned as heretical like Galileo’s observations on planetary motions.
Improved printing techniques led the way to increased book production. What started out as highly priced books reserved only for the wealthy and educated soon trickled to the middle class’ love affair with the written word. Novels were made to especially cater to the sentiments and yearnings of the 19th century common man. Europe and America saw the rise of the novel not only as a literary form but as a tool for social change.
Now, we are on the cusp of a major change; something which had already been tackled in science fiction novels in the early part of the last century -- paperless novels and reading materials.
It has already been dubbed as the “jack-of-all-trades” since it was introduced to the public on January 27, 2010. The iPad has the power to store book pages, pictures, songs, movies and games among other things. It can also be a planner and personal computer with internet capacity.
Its main selling point among others is the amount of information (read: book/magazine pages) it can store without the usual bulk. Forget about trips to the library or bookstore. With the aid of wi-fi, one need only click a button to download any reading materials available in the database of service providers.
No page, no bulk? Does it mean that people will at last have no excuse not to finish “War and Peace”? Or breeze through the streets of Paris with Jean Valjean perhaps? Well, that may be another story. Reading habits are surely bound to change. With the availability of too many reading materials, we may be facing an era of iPad-toting kids suffering from information overload. But the next question is: What kind of information? Maybe soon, a different version of the canonical list of classics will be rewritten to suit the evolving taste of the digital bibliophile.
What we are sure of is its great impact on the printing industry. An estimated 45 trillion pages are printed annually all over the world. According to Barnes and Noble, there were 30,700 printing companies in the United States alone in 2006; this equates to a $112 billion industry. Imagine its effects on thousands of families who depend are in the printing business.
It may be too early to predict the major impacts of iPad. With a catalog of 11 million songs, 8,000 films and 2,000 movies to choose from with just the click of a button courtesy of an iTunes store, things are still in its infancy. What is surprising is the introductory price of $499; surely it was way below than what the market had expected.
So is the iPad the invention to end it all? The 9.7-inch wonder may have it all but the users’ receptivity will still be determined in time. One thing is for sure, the smell of fresh pages unwrapped will soon waft into memory. Tomorrow’s children will beg you: "Please dad. Tell us again of that time when you had real books.”
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