It is becoming progressively uncommon to do things offline, away from a screen; here is why it is nice to keep books offline.
In this day and age we spend a lot of our time taking a look at screens. Our work is really typically on screens, and they are becoming a much bigger part of our working life, and the manner in which we unwind tends to use screens, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, they ae becoming an even bigger part of our relaxation also. For a lot of us, relaxation is associated with viewing movies or tv, all of which is done on a screen, or perhaps reading a book, which had actually been able to stay away from the monopolisation of the screen until quite recently. Books are one of the earliest technologies that we still use today, with the book as we understand it today being practically unchanged for about 2 thousand years now. Although eBooks may have been sold as the inevitable progression of the book, perhaps having at least one thing in your life that you do away from a screen is reason enough to stay clear of them. People like the co-founder of the impact investor with a stake in World of Books would most likely value the appeal of checking out a book without the need for a screen.
So much of our lives now exists online. From our work to our entertainment and our shopping, the internet now touches almost every part of our lives. Although the internet has definitely made a lot of things a lot easier and even more available for a great many people, it does take away from some things. Searching for beautiful books in a lovely little bookshop, for instance, is definitely better than just hitting 'order' when buying them online. People like the co-CEO of the hedge fund that owns Waterstones would probably appreciate the pleasures of offline shopping in bookshops.
We are typically told that innovation is the inescapable progression of things, a necessary enhancement that they would not endure without, but is this actually accurate? It is an easy misconception to buy into, we have all experienced how mobile phones have made our lives easier, offering us access to more things than we know how what to do with, but we also understand how it has actually harmed us also. And many things have in fact rather stubbornly resisted digitalisation, like books. Although it might have been expected that online books would make their print predecessors a thing of the past, that has actually not taken place at all, possibly speaking with the limits of digitalisation and blowing a book-shaped hole in the misconception of technological development. People like the CEO of the asset manager with a stake in Amazon books may understand how books have actually withstood being technologically updated.