Anthony Talbert Anthony Borerro English 1102 March 25 2013 The End of Books?

A Response It is sometimes said that stories can be derived from objects. Artifacts left behind by a civilization will tell its descendants a story about their forefathers. So what happens when a civilization doesnt leave behind these artifacts? One hundred years ago there were books, journals, logs, business ledgers, and all types of writings that we can currently use to better understand the lives of those who came before us. In recent discussion the question has been raised, what will our generation leave behind? Generation Y an age of humanity born into a time where technological advancements move just as fast as the information we send across the world through the most favored tool of the century, the internet. A generation where we learned to use the internet through dial-up and have only moved forward ever since, becoming a generation where through laptops, desktops, tablets, and cell phones, most of our information is stored in a virtual world. So, with all of our journals, artistic works, and latest Facebook updates being online, what are we tangibly leaving behind for the next generation to derive from? Furthermore, could teacher and immigrant to our digital world, Robert Coover be right when he claimed that we are approaching The end of books in the physical form we know them. In The End of Books, Robert Coover describes our current society as The world of video transmissions, cellular phones, fax machines, computer networks... and even described libraries as dusty, unattended, museums.(The End of Books). He explores the possibilities of a

world where paperback novels no longer exist, the new reading of choice being Hyper-text fiction, a non-linear approach to telling stories, where through links embedded within lines, the arch of a story can change depending on the readers choice, making the experience different for each reader. ...Keep in mind that this isnt the writing of an uninformed student, unappreciative of a former artform and over inflating the greatness of the internet. Coover was close to seventy during the time this article was published, and had done his own research, as well as taught a class on hyper-text fiction, just to increase his understanding of the subject.