Electronic book may change much more than just our literary habits

Why pay the mortgage when you can live at home with your parents?

If technology continues to alter the way we receive our media, we might not have places like movie theaters, movie rental outlets and even places like Anderson's Bookshop in downtown Naperville - a place that has existed and flourished in the middle of the ever-changing publishing industry.

But for how long? How can land-based businesses retain profits when people can obtain the same products faster and cheaper online?

Now, for only (insert expletive) $400 you can buy a piece of technology that acts like a book but it's on a screen.

Amazon.com recently introduced the Kindle, a portable electronic paper display device that looks like a larger BlackBerry phone but is solely for reading. The toy can download a New York Times bestseller in less than a minute.

You call digitally flip through the newspaper on your morning trek to Chicago on the Metra. Oh, and this is not just a wireless Internet device, it uses the same technology that high-end cell phones employ, which means you can access databases at any time, anywhere.

It can store as many as 200 books at once. There are no monthly charges and purchasing books is often cheaper because the cost of paper is taken out of the equation. The device is already sold out.

Now, remember that BBC News just a few years ago credited Johann Gutenberg with the invention of the millennium, the printing press. Cars, telephones, jet engines, electricity and the Internet were just a few of the other inventions created over the last thousand years.

But none were as significant as the printing press, which united the world with information.

And so we now have a device that will once again more than likely change the way we retrieve and digest information. It's the kind of tool that can change universities and high schools. It can revolutionize business.

Sure, many people will argue that they would much rather read with real paper. But the Internet is proving how viable and prevalent newspapers can be online. A new generation will continue to read newspapers, magazines and books digitally.

To refute that, well, seems rather shortsighted. Think of how many people have held out on purchasing a cell phone only to find themselves in possession of the technology within the last two years. (Think grandparents.)

And as we've learned, technology can change our habits forever - for good or bad.

Visit Mike Mitchell's blog, My Big Fat Mouth, at napersun.com.