E-Books Could Send Third World Countries Back to the Dark Age.

Electronic publishing is overwhelmingly posited to the rapid deployment of books to customers in a timely fashion, and affordably. The chatter in scholarly environments is now about a technological paradigm shift that has affected the book publishing industry. Companies are coming with ambitious goals of changing the way books are experienced; and at the 8th International Conference on the Book that took place at the University of Sankt Gallen, Switzerland in 2010, executives of publishing houses discussed their plans to digitize their entire warehouses dating back to the 19th century, thus getting rid of all their hard copies. Publishers plan to do away with printed books as they shift to electronic delivery. Devices such as electronic text readers, multifunction smart phones, and notebook computers are being marketed as new ways to carry entire libraries of books ubiquitously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]