Nursery World - Double act

Combine a paper book with software? Whatever next? Jenny Benjamin discovers a surprising education duo One of the favourite predictions of the IT (information technology) prophets is the imminent death of the book. In the future, they tell us, we'll read only from monitors, if, that is, we read at all. Talking text, voice command and touch screens will make reading, writing, and even typing, obsolete. Well, all I can say is, don't hold your breath. The book, that anachronistic wad of non-interactive paper, seems to be holding its own pretty well in this new era of Chips with Everything.

One of the favourite predictions of the IT (information technology) prophets is the imminent death of the book. In the future, they tell us, we'll read only from monitors, if, that is, we read at all. Talking text, voice command and touch screens will make reading, writing, and even typing, obsolete. Well, all I can say is, don't hold your breath. The book, that anachronistic wad of non-interactive paper, seems to be holding its own pretty well in this new era of Chips with Everything.

The big joke on the pundits is that the computer industry itself generates mountains of literature. Apart from the obvious manuals, mags and how-to tomes, there are the game hero fanzines, the Quick Ways to Win game books, even a whole genre of IT-dominated science fiction set in that bookless future.

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