The Future of Reading

I was browsing NPR today and noticed a little article about e-books and Lynn Neary's take on what is happening and perhaps what will happen in the future to not only how we read books and get information - but also how it's written and distributed to the masses. It start off in a quirky way - about how we unsuspecting readers whouldn't have guessed that at the beginning of the decade we would have such a thing like an electronic book and that we would be reading them on our cell phones. Kind of puts things into perspective. The article quotes Nicholas Carr (author of the Big Switch): "When printed books first became popular, thanks to Gutenberg's press, you saw this great expansion of eloquence and experimentation, all of which came out of the fact that here was a technology that encouraged people to read deeply, with great concentration and focus. And as we move to the new technology of the screen ... it has a very different effect, an almost opposite effect, and you will see a retreat from the sophistication and eloquence that characterized the printed page." Neary goes on to talk about the different mediums, like Twitter Books, that authors and their readers have turned to in order to get people to read. Gimmicks, links, correspondence with other consumers and so forth and so on.... are now common staples that help to keep things entertaining and ensure that things will get read. Will this always be? Will the future of the written word keep changing and morphing? What do you think? For more on this - read the NPR article HERE