The End of Books Article

I thought this was a very insightful article that is highlighting where hypertext started, and also potentially where it is headed in the future. Like most of the articles I found some very surprising information such as hypertext fiction being published on disks as far back as 1991. When I think of online print now I tend to focus on the last ten years being a prominent source for hypertext taking off. Although I see book stores such as Barnes and Nobles still around there are still other companies that are going under like Borders books, and I often wonder what the future of books will be like. Especially now with technology like the kindle and even just our basic computers enable us to read books online. I know many people who still prefer to read their books in physical book form, but that doesn't mean that we won't see an end of books here in our lifetime. Much like people who were not so eager to switch over from cassette players to CD players eventually had no choice in the matter because technology moves forward whether or not we are displeased. When the technology of watching movies on the computer or streaming them with an HDMI cable to our televisions we slowly saw Hollywood Videos and many Blockbuster videos shutting down because there was not as high of a demand for a DVD to watch a movie. I thought that it was very interesting what the article mentioned in regard to hypertext using different font types to identify voice and plot elements. The way we used to know books is one type of font throughout the whole book that we do not often associate with what we are reading, meaning our minds interpret what is happening in the story based on the words, rather than how the text is displayed. With hypertext there is the ability to shift to several different fonts and even font sizes to place emphasis on specific parts of the content. Personally the thought of this is not appealing and I would prefer to read a simple text that stays the same, but I have no idea what I will be saying about this ten years from this point. I have always been a little bit slower than the average person in regard to technology. I never even understood how people preferred to listening to books on tape as opposed to reading them because I occasionally found myself annoyed by the person reading the book, and was unable to focus on the content. I think I might have a similar experience if I were to read a book through hyperspace and the font were to be constantly changing as if it was forcing me to accept specific content as being more important, serious, etc. than other parts of the book.