I was looking at a Western Civilization textbook earlier. I found it at my parent's house & probably belonged to one of my siblings. Despite my tendency to pick up a reference book to randomly look through, it got me thinking how student textbooks are becoming unnecessary in the world of the iPad & mobile devices.
Out of curiosity, I looked up the cost of textbooks & it seems the average cost of college books is $900 per year. Why not save some trees & enter the future by supplying all students in grade school & college with iPads which can be loaded with textbook material? It has to be more cost effective & eco-friendly. The publishers can still create content in digital form, but the textbook business will inevitably be affected like many industries during times of rapid change.
I'm already thinking about all kinds of problems & issues with their use, but I think such devices as touchscreen computers are going to be the primary learning tools for the near future.
The NY Times is another publication that must adapt to these changing formats:
Of course, once the iThink is produced, "learning" will consist of instantly streaming the information directly to your consciousness. By then, e-mans (enhanced humans) will probably consider the idea of "reading" to be unbearably slow & archaic- like we currently think of writing letters by hand in cursive.
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