Some people believe that the internet will replace traditional books in the future. Do you believe this would be a positive or a negative development?

Over the last decade, the number of readers of the old books has significantly increased the world over. While some opine that the internet supersede traditional books in the forthcoming period is a positive trend, others believe it has deleterious effects. To my mind, in the future, replacing these books with the internet is a positive development.

One of the major advantages of changing these old books into electronic format for displaying in a web page is that it reaches many hands at any time. Since many old books are less in number so these cannot be used by the increasing number of readers. If you take “ Agni Sirakugal” by Dr.K. Abdul Kalam is only available in India but not in overseas, unless these have been uploaded in to the website. Therefore, this approach would benefit to reading enthusiasts in all spheres of the earth.

Another factor that deserves attention of this approach is that the internet enables to store books for an indefinite time. It is because the papers of printed old books are low quality so it may fade or destroy at sometimes in the future. Many astrologers’ notes in India, for example, were perished since no technology was there to preserve them. As a result, India lost some of the legacies from their ancestors. Thus, it is clear that in order to store ancient books, internet is the best tool.

At the end of the day, traditional books are an important repository of the country. Preservation of such assets is the need of the hour, so replacing them with internet would bring benefits to the world.