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Survey Analysis: Consumer Digital Reading Preferences Reveal the Exaggerated Death of Paper

A study (titled above) found that acceptance of digital text is growing, such as with iPad users. For people with such devices, the times spent reading digital texts now equals about the time spent on paper-based text. These devices are now seen as being easer to use and most find them just as readable as printed text.

I'm often surprised at how many people see text as some kind of dichotomous event. While in the long run we may perhaps see a major tapering off, I don't understand this Death of Paper concept. When automobiles became common, it didn't mean that there were no more horses used overnight, but instead that there was a gradual shift from horse power to internal combustion. And still today there are horses used in pubic transportation (I live near the nations oldest city and they have a large carriage trade).

If you can remember the first computer monitors and the issues that they had, the green color, the dots, and the flickering, and then look at how much they have developed, that process is occurring now with digital text readers. The devices are becoming easier to read and use, they now hold more and can even act independently of a computer. I am not surprised that acceptance is up, people who like to read like the ease of use and access that the devices offer and now that they are so readable I expect to see such numbers rise. One person that I work with had recently gotten her own kindle and was overall pleased as she used it, then the other day she found the search tool, and became every excited as this made it so much easier for her to research and find information from what she had read. Stating that this was going to be the book format for the future - she really loves the search feature, with that too though she has some vision issues and really appreciates the variable font size display.


The report is: "Survey Analysis: Consumer Digital Reading Preferences Reveal the Exaggerated Death of Paper,"

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