Can on-line media take over traditional print? One might think so eventually, but I have my doubts. Granted, the internet as a media resource is doing nothing but getting bigger but there is something romantic about print that will never die.
My dad has worked on the internet since it started. He spends hours out of the day on the computer, but whenever he had some material of any length he would print it out and then read it. He would staple the pages together, take it out the living room, sit on the couch and read it there.
I asked him recently why he did that and he didn’t really have that good an answer. But I tie it in with the same reason people keep books they like on their shelves. Print is something personal. There’s something more there then just words on a screen. I like the quote I found on the yahoo discussion board, “It puts the page-turning in a page turner.”
Granted the internet allows the reader to communicate with the author, click on links and learn more or get other perspectives, and being able to trade ideas with others makes but people don’t spend long hours reading their favorite book on the computer. People want to be able to curl up in bed or on the beach and flip through the pages, and feel the pages of what they’re reading.
