What do you think books/literature will be like 100 years from now?

[_Shannon_]

The past hundred years saw the advent and dominance of the paperback, changes in form and scope of writing, the emergence of a uniquely American tradition in poetry, a beginning to emerge, more readily available world literature selection for English speaking people.

In the music industry, in my lifetime- we've gone from vinyl records, to tapes, to CDs, to mp3s--with only audiophiles now collecting vinyl records and older people buying CDs.

There seems to be a massive push toward the digitalization of books, and I wonder when my children are my age or when their children are--what will books and literature be like?? Does it worry anyone else the influence Apple has on the emerging digital books? Will they be the purveyors of taste? Who decides what makes it to digital? (For example,Apple doing things like this (http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/06/apple-bans-cartoon-boobs-in-joyces-ulysses/) and this (http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/apple-bans-satire/) :rolleyes:)

What do you think it will all be like next century?

[Biefall]

The people is become lazier than ever... so... without giving a clear anwser because I dont have it, I believe that it has to become way more easy to read, to understand and to get.

Big industries are taking control over literature (the same way that happened to music) and are filling the world with “pop” books that ARE going to sell despite the fact if they truly teach something or make us think, if you don’t believe it look for the past few years best sellers and you’ll see what I am talking about. In terms of “quality” it will be a downhill downgrade and in physical terms it will become virtual mostly.
Did you know that we only use 1/3 of the words our grand grand-grandparents used? Imagine the coming generations if we let this keep going down…

[PeterL]

The past hundred years saw the advent and dominance of the paperback, changes in form and scope of writing, the emergence of a uniquely American tradition in poetry, a beginning to emerge, more readily available world literature selection for English speaking people.

In the music industry, in my lifetime- we've gone from vinyl records, to tapes, to CDs, to mp3s--with only audiophiles now collecting vinyl records and older people buying CDs.

There seems to be a massive push toward the digitalization of books, and I wonder when my children are my age or when their children are--what will books and literature be like?? Does it worry anyone else the influence Apple has on the emerging digital books? Will they be the purveyors of taste? Who decides what makes it to digital? (For example,Apple doing things like this (http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/06/apple-bans-cartoon-boobs-in-joyces-ulysses/) and this (http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/apple-bans-satire/) :rolleyes:)

What do you think it will all be like next century?

There are several different trends going on. It is easier than ever to publish a book. Over the next several decades I think that will make agents and major publishers less important. That will also lead to more bad literature being published.

Publishing has always been a gamble. About five percent of books actually make money. We may see that figure drop to two percent.

E-publishing has cut the cost to publish and reduced the barriers to entering the publishing business, so there will be more tiny publishers. E-publishing has also decreased the profits in publishing, so there will be attempts by publishers to produce more printed versions, as a show of prestige. I can imagine many books coming out in electronic form, and a year later a few of those will be printed on paper to show that they are "superior".

There are also trends on the quality of the writing, but I won't go into that.

[damondarkwalker]

If my wife has her way, it'll all be Japanese Manga! LOL!

They'll probably just plug us in and download the books we want into our brains.

There's an older guy at my office who is always early to work so that he can have his breakfast and a few quiet moments. He sits in the corner of the cafeteria and reads for a good hour before he goes upstairs to his cubicle. I've seen him every day for a year now, always with some new Sci-Fi book. Well...I came in a few days ago, and he had an iPad. He was sitting there in the same spot, pouring over the "pages" of a book on his screen.

I love the smell of paper, and the feel of books, and I'll cling to my library; but maybe the iPad is the future.

[Night_Lamp]

If we're forced into digital books, I hope someone comes up with a software program that prints the text, and provides some sort of binding for them. Think: choice of binding, print size, and paper type. Maybe it is not so bad. Like how we can now burn cd's of varying quality from our digital music files.

I will alway prefer hard copies.

[Alexander III]

Did you know that we only use 1/3 of the words our grand grand-grandparents used? Imagine the coming generations if we let this keep going down…

True but coincidentally roughly 1/3 of us would have not survived into adolescence in our grand grand-grandparents age, I prefer things as they are. We always focus on what we loose but never what we have gained. Besides most of the language they used was superfluous, our language carries the same weight and poesy, it is only less dense and more precise.

As for the question, I think it shall be mostly digitalized except for some limited editions actually printed. Now while I prefer reading an actual book, I hope it shall all be digitalized. How many trees are burned down to make books, now that we have an alternate which saves forests, we should take advantage of it. The trend of society implies that with every generation we gain awareness of the preservation of nature and of social injustice.

As for the form of the novel, I think the language shall be simpler and more direct compared to our novels, think universal Hemingway.

[Taliesin]

Looking at the past hundred ears I think you have to be bloody insane to accurately predict what will happen. That or maybe we will have a collapse of civilization as we know it. But if not, the technological changes might be so mind-boggling that they would be nearly unpredictable.

[mal4mac]

First step:

We will have a small electronic implant in our brain. By just thinking "War & Peace" the words will immediately download to our mind in the most efficient possible manner - without clunking optical, paper, or kindle mechanisms being involved.

Second step:

The brain state of the most knowledgeable readers of W&P will be recorded, collated and downloaded automatically into a "reader's" brain. Such a reader will then possess all the knowledge and memories of all experts on War & Peace. The process should take a few minutes, so the canon can be expanded to many more works, and absorbed at the rate of about 1000 books a day.

Third step:

The entire canon will be downloaded into the human brain on reaching "maturity", initially it might take a few hours, given limitations on download speeds.

Fourth step:

"Junk" DNA is spliced out of the human genome and replaced by "canon generating" DNA so that the entire works of humanity will be available to all humans as fast as their DNA can give them to the "reader".

Fifth step:

Humans will be replaced by a super-computer that knows the entire canon and spends eternity adding to it as fast as universal processing systems based on sub-string level components can manage. Initially, it might take a nanosecond to generate a canon equivalent to that generated by humans up to the 21st century.

[Alexander III]

Oh snap I just realized there wont be any more novels after 2012 !!!!!!!!!!!! :D

[dafydd manton]

I strongly suspect that the book will still be with us, if only because so many have been preserved from years ago. In the same way that the total demise of cinema was predicted when television became popular, and the demise of newspapers with the advent of radio, to say nothing of live music when recordings became readily available, I'm pretty sure that books will still be around. The prophets of doom with their Jeremaiaids were probably saying the same thing with the birth of the codex, but the written word is still around. Whilst it will doubtless be available electronically, many of us still love the feel of paper, the smell of a book, the sheer convenience of something you can just stick in a pocket and read at a moment's notice, whether on the Tube, in a bus queue, whilst your computer is sulking or whenever, without developing that peculiar squint that the old electronicals seems to cause. Did vinyl recordings disappear, as was predicted? Not for the cognoscenti, they didn't, so I would guess the book will still be around for a long while yet.

[MaineTim]

I don't know if digital books will fully supplant their "dead-tree" ancestors or not, but if they do, my concern is one of "universality of access". Will there be a single standard so that any digital book I purchase will be accessible on any viewer I chose to use? Will I be able to "borrow" digital content from libraries in the way I can borrow a printed book now? I worry about the ability of content providers to lock a user in and balkanize access to literature, and that the loss of the printed page might mean even more limited access to some material for those who aren't able to afford the costs currently associated with digital books.

[_Shannon_]

First step:

We will have a small electronic implant in our brain. By just thinking "War & Peace" the words will immediately download to our mind in the most efficient possible manner - without clunking optical, paper, or kindle mechanisms being involved.

Second step:

The brain state of the most knowledgeable readers of W&P will be recorded, collated and downloaded automatically into a "reader's" brain. Such a reader will then possess all the knowledge and memories of all experts on War & Peace. The process should take a few minutes, so the canon can be expanded to many more works, and absorbed at the rate of about 1000 books a day.

Third step:

The entire canon will be downloaded into the human brain on reaching "maturity", initially it might take a few hours, given limitations on download speeds.

Fourth step:

"Junk" DNA is spliced out of the human genome and replaced by "canon generating" DNA so that the entire works of humanity will be available to all humans as fast as their DNA can give them to the "reader".

Fifth step:

Humans will be replaced by a super-computer that knows the entire canon and spends eternity adding to it as fast as universal processing systems based on sub-string level components can manage. Initially, it might take a nanosecond to generate a canon equivalent to that generated by humans up to the 21st century.

I think you have one hell of a sci-fi novel started there!!!:)


I have enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts. I love my books. I love seeing them on the shelves; my little colorful trophies, some of which have been hard won. I love how they feel and smell. I love finding the little notes and papers I've shoved inside years before....But I can't help but feel that all of that will just be sort of fuddy-duddiness a decade or two from now....the way my [arents can barely work their computer or digital camera.

[_Shannon_]

I don't know if digital books will fully supplant their "dead-tree" ancestors or not, but if they do, my concern is one of "universality of access". Will there be a single standard so that any digital book I purchase will be accessible on any viewer I chose to use? Will I be able to "borrow" digital content from libraries in the way I can borrow a printed book now? I worry about the ability of content providers to lock a user in and balkanize access to literature, and that the loss of the printed page might mean even more limited access to some material for those who aren't able to afford the costs currently associated with digital books.

I think these are all good and important questions. The Nook (B and N's e-reader) has a "loan" feature. I wonder if that won't be extended. I think worrying about access is important, too, as the cheapest e-readers are hovering around $150. Of course somehow nearly everyone has cell phones and TVs despite their costs...

[mortalterror]

I tend to favor an organic view of the arts. Human's haven't replaced monkeys and television hasn't displaced the societal need for film and radio, so I believe that electronic media will just be one more popular option. Everyone will have e-readers, but everyone will still buy newspapers and books.

In a hundred years, the quality will be, for better or worse, roughly the same as it is now with a handful of superstars dominating the limelight and millions of naysayers denouncing the decay of the arts from some far fetched ideal. The public eye will hover around the major economic and military powers, probably China and India, adding some eastern revisions to the standard western canon our young people currently study.

Over the next fifty years, do to changing population trends there will be a cultural shift throughout the west emphasizing the artistic contributions of ascendant but previously fringe minority groups. Numerous authors will write about this change and the consequences this has had on society, along with whatever civil rights/religious/political subject is prurient to the people's interests at the time.

Academic philosophers will make world changing discoveries that have almost no impact on the everyday man, and only a few students of those professors will take an interest in their pet theories. The rest will continue writing readable prose for the masses, or precious purple psychological pieces for niche markets.

[IceM]

All books will be converted to digital files, then a computer superhacker will: highlight all --> select all --> delete all. Then Ray Bradbury will look like a genius, even though nobody would know who he is.

[JBI]

I tend to favor an organic view of the arts. Human's haven't replaced monkeys and television hasn't displaced the societal need for film and radio, so I believe that electronic media will just be one more popular option. Everyone will have e-readers, but everyone will still buy newspapers and books.

In a hundred years, the quality will be, for better or worse, roughly the same as it is now with a handful of superstars dominating the limelight and millions of naysayers denouncing the decay of the arts from some far fetched ideal. The public eye will hover around the major economic and military powers, probably China and India, adding some eastern revisions to the standard western canon our young people currently study.

Over the next fifty years, do to changing population trends there will be a cultural shift throughout the west emphasizing the artistic contributions of ascendant but previously fringe minority groups. Numerous authors will write about this change and the consequences this has had on society, along with whatever civil rights/religious/political subject is prurient to the people's interests at the time.

Academic philosophers will make world changing discoveries that have almost no impact on the everyday man, and only a few students of those professors will take an interest in their pet theories. The rest will continue writing readable prose for the masses, or precious purple psychological pieces for niche markets.

It depends - for instance, Blog has become a major genre in certain places. In China now, for instance, people are full out publishing over the internet, where the population coupled with the lack of obsession with authorship creates a world where one is satisfied with tens of thousands of readers, which isn't unheard of.


I think electronic will become dominant, and it will perhaps change the way read, in that it won't be long before footnoting becomes much, much easier, to the point where references will be searchable by clicking..

[Taliesin]

I think people will write things in which they predict what will happen after a hundred years by taking some trends from the last ten years and then extrapolating them in a nice and linear fashion.

[JuniperWoolf]

*eyeroll* The people in my English class last year were spouting off "end of the books" conspiracy theories a lot, the whole thing bugs me.

First of all, they think that the content will suffer. Everyone complains that they think that literature in the future is going to be one long text message. I believe that literature will still be what it's always been: you've got your crap, then you've got your good writing. Popcorn novels aren't a new invention, there's been some version of Nora Roberts for quite a while now. Books will survive, and good stuff will continue to be written.

Secondly, they believe that the format will be all digital. I doubt it. Been in a Chapters recently? It's damn busy. People still love books, like they always have, and they always will. Radio and television co-exist, the same will be true of electronic and hardcopy texts.

[dfloyd]

there will always be book collectors whether it be first editions, signed editions, or finely printed and bound copies. The person who pays $11,000 for a first edition of Tender Is the Night is unlikely to care about downloading an e-book. Art went through some phases before prices went haywire. But now an Andy Wharhol or a Roy Lichtenstein is almost priceless. Books, in general, are less dear than original art. And there will always be collectors with affordability.

[blazeofglory]

Hundred years from now on will be a world unimaginably ugly, speaking apocalyptically, given the amount of damage we have been causing to this beautiful planet, and as a matter of fact we all are defacing the earth, and the recent disastrous episode of the oil spilled over the ocean attribute to this fact. I cannot be hopeful unless we land on a new planet, a virgin planet which in which we can resettle and of course thinking of books of literature is virtually absurd hundred years from now