E-books in relation to technology, science, and their impact on Research Paper

E-books in relation to technology, science, and their impact on society. Where will they be in 2060 - Research Paper Example According to a research study by Lyman and Hal in 2002, more than 93 percent of completely new information is being produced in digital format (as cited in Lee, Guttenberg, McCrary, 2002, p.227). In recent times, digital publishing has reached critical mass. Media coverage and future books fair reporting has made the consumer well-aware of eBooks and ereaders. Apple’s iPad cum ereader has changes the way ereaedrs are perceived. Ebooks market is in transition, it is evolving and restructuring itself for better (PwC,n.d.,pp.2-4).While suggesting the future of eBooks in 2060 based on research evidence, the paper briefly studies the EBooks’ impact on our society, technology, and science. 1. EBooks and Technology With the accelerated production of digital content, user interest is increasing in devices that are specifically designed to read electronic content (eBooks) such as, e-readers, PPCs, Smartphone, and tablets. From many aspects, eBooks are far more efficient than tra ditional paper books (pbooks), such as: storage, transfer, accessibility, and delivery. Due to compressing ability, storage devices for eBooks are much smaller in size as compared to pbooks. Unlike pbooks, eBooks allow readers to introduce multimedia and hypertext links into books. For instance, eBooks facilitates the readers experience by video clips, audio or sound narrations. Reader can easily jump to a location on Web through a simple click (Lee, Guttenberg, McCrary, 2002, p.227). With the arrival of Amazon Kindle and Apple’s iPad, e-reader technology has taken off. EBook readers are increasingly becoming part of our everyday life, readers are going to experience much more of e-readers and their competitors, such as, tablet computers in future libraries(Rotman Epps & McQuivey as cited in Aaltonen, Mannonen, Nieminen, & Nieminen,2011,p.16). 2. E-books and Society Accessibility is another major feature that can easily overcome pbooks in future. Online libraries provide valu able information in their public domains eBooks, for instance, netLibrary, Internet Public Library, and Project Gutenberg. EBooks provide people with a chance to access wealth of information just by having an internet connection. Despite all the convenience, eBooks may not completely take over pbooks. However, there is considerable number of predictions for the success of eBooks. Considering the limitation of eBooks, such as, slow acceptance of the innovation, user unwillingness to read from screen(Lee, Nicholas, & Victor, 2002, p.228) lacking display quality, cost, durability, and ease(Sottong as cited in Lee, Â  Guttenberg, McCrary, 2002, p.228) it can be inferred that eBooks are going to co-exist with pbooks in recent future. EBooks have great potential for providing enhanced learning opportunities for better engagement and control over content and activities. Quick access and portability is the feature that facilitate remote learning and save travel time and energy (Hernon et a l., as cited in Lam, Lam,& McNaught,2010,p.8).EBooks have potential to enhance the learning experience by improved relationship between student and educator while dealing with learning materials(Shiratuddin, Landoni, Gibb,& Hassan,2003).According to Robert, Slattery and Kardos, text-to-speech or Braille output programs are likely to increase information