The World Is Flat

The World is Flat

Technology today is becoming more suitable for our everyday lives. Electronic readers are an example in the flattening of the world. Distad (2011) stated that the predictions of book’s demise have paralleled recent advances in digital publishing to become almost as common as prophecies of doomsday. Speculative lists of things, such as postal services, landline telephones, newspaper and printed books that will also disappear in our lifetime (Distad, 2011).

Books and periodicals can be access electronically through electronic reader devices such as the Nook, Kindles, Smart phones as well as Electronic Notebooks & Tablets. Consumers of popular genre fictions are already embracing the e-book and abandoning paper versions, which accounts for Amazon’s recent announcement that its sales of e-books have eclipsed sales of printed books by a 5% margin (Distad, 2011). E-readers offer a digital bookstore, which makes it easier for consumer to search for books and periodicals. E-readers also provide multi-media services such as accessing the internet, social networking, playing games, listening to music, etc. Books and periodicals are also available to read through the internet. Even schools offer textbooks online, which helps eliminate the cost of maintenance and replacement of print-based materials.

Consumers no longer have to rely on libraries and book stores to access & purchase books. As Friedman (2006) stated in his article, individuals are now their own research, editors and consumers. Friedman (2006) calls this ability, informing. Friedman (2006) stated, “There is no bigger flattener than the idea of making all the world’s knowledge, or even just a big chunk of it, available to anyone and everyone, anytime, anywhere.”

E-books will also undoubtedly dominate the market for large reference books, such as encyclopedias and anything else that is regularly revised and updated, as well as for scholarly journals, if not...