A book is...

A book is an idea. A book doesn't have guidelines or rules. There is no reason for that a book should be required to be written on paper. Books, or stories in ancient history used to be written on stone tablets, or cave walls but when a new technology was discovered that made it easier to write, these ancient concepts were abandoned. We didn't continue to write on caves because we "love the way a new cave smells", instead we advanced as we should and came to love the new vehicle for sharing our stories. Books are far more important than any attempt at a physical representation of what they are. A book is far more than a couple of pieces of paper taped to some plastic to hold it all together. A book transcends the physical nature of paper and is adaptable to any environmnet. You dont even need to have something physical to represent a book because a book is just a story, a story that can start through sharing from mouth to mouth. As society advances book will advance with us, because if there is one thing that Tom Piazza got right, it was when he said "I mean if there's no future for books, there's no future". There may be no future for the United States postal service, and there may be no future for paper stories, but the idea of books, and stories will always have a future, so long as the human existence has one. So we will advance, slowly more and more people will come to have electronic versions of books. In church you will start to see more and more kindles or Ipods in the place of the Bible until the ratio switches to where instead of occasionally seeing an ebook, you will only occasionally see a real book. And maybe we will miss the smell of a new book, but as our children grow up with our technology and read books through a different vehicle they will learn to become nostalgic of the smell of a new Ereader. They will love the smell that a Kindle gives off, however minute. If a newer technology comes along to replace Ipods and Ereaders than so be it. Each technology will have it's own way to bring up waves of nostalgia, and it may not be a smell, we may just come to love the feel of an environment as we delve into our new worlds. But the idea of a book. of a story can never, ever disappear in a society that remains innately human.