I will continue to buy paper books for as long as they continue to print them. I couldn't resist picking up a nice 40th anniversary copy of
Dune yesterday. There's one I haven't read since junior high.
And as you know I'm not personally big on the social media, but supposedly facebook.com accounts for one out of every four page views in the U.S. these days. We're collectively quite fascinated with what we're all up to, apparently. Besides connecting with other readers, I also just saw this --
you can ask questions of some authors directly from your Kindle. Now, this rogues gallery of beta authors isn't exactly the Algonquin Round Table, but you can see where this is trending. Readers connecting with other readers and with authors while they're in the act of reading.
I don't know. I have a bit of split personality on these things -- the Tolkien in me longs for simpler times. The
Star Trek fan in me is jazzed to have tricorder tech available (still waiting impatiently for a breakthrough on the transporter, though). Part of me is glad just to see that enough people are still interested in reading at all to make e-readers a viable product.