By SCOTT DEWING
Published: May 2008

I have a ton of books. I don't mean that figuratively speaking. I really do own some 2,000 pounds of books scattered about my home. No, I didn't weigh each book. It's just an estimate based on some very sound (hack) scientific inquiry. The paperbacks are less than a pound and the heaviest book I own is The Riverside Shakespeare, which weighs 6.2 lbs. The Riverside Shakespeare resides on my nightstand but not because I'm a Shakespeare aficionado. Some people keep guns or clubs next to their beds. I practice a more poetic violence—break into my home and I'll bust ya upside the head with some heavy-duty Shakespeare yo.

I love my books. I should be a registered bibliophile. Not only can my books be used as a weapon (both in the war of ideas and against bad guys), but they make me feel smart when I look at them because they remind me of all the knowledge I've gained from them. Even the titles I've not yet read (Collapse, The City of God, The European Discovery of America, War and Peace, to name a few) make me feel smart. This is important because it helps distract me from dwelling on the many stupid things I do each day that encourage me to think otherwise.

Looking at my books now, I know that they are the last analog holdout of the digital age and will soon be relegated to history. My children (ages 7 and 10) will be the last generation that will read physical books. Their children will come to my home and be fascinated by Grandpa's collection of "old books" that smell funny. My grandchildren will toss aside their e-reader/mp3-player/gaming/web-browser/cell-phone device (the iEverything?) to play with Grandpa's old books. They'll build forts with them and hit each other over the head. I'll have to hide The Riverside Shakespeare so no one gets seriously injured.

The printed book is a technology that has been around for more than 500 years. With the invention of the printing press and movable type, books proliferated and a bunch of monks lost their jobs as scribes while the middle class gained access to knowledge that previously had been the privilege of the ruling elite. One could argue that books have been key to the education and transformation of society that has led to the industrial and technology revolutions. The book as a concept will continue to live on, but the book as a medium will fundamentally change over the next decade.

The transformation of the book to an all-digital medium, or Book 2.0, is already underway and a major milestone was reached at the end of last year with the launch of the Kindle. The Kindle is an "e-reader", which is an electronic device that emulates a book. The Kindle is not the first e-reader to hit the market. The Sony Reader came out in 2006 and there are others. I mention the Kindle not as an endorsement of the product, but because of the significance of who built it and is promoting it—Amazon, the #1 online e-commerce company in the world. In the 1990s, Amazon transformed the publishing world with its online bookstore. With the Kindle, Amazon will become the front-runner in transforming how we consume books and other traditionally printed media such as magazines.

The Kindle weighs in at 10.3 ounces and has enough memory to hold up to 200 titles at a time. Its screen is about the size of a normal paperback book and presents text with the use of E Ink, a relatively new display technology that mimics the clarity of a real printed page. Unlike a laptop, the Kindle has no moving parts and lasts for up to 30 hours on a fully charged battery. In this respect, it is similar to the Sony Reader, which also is light-weight, has a long battery life and utilizes E Ink technology for its display. Where the Kindle is different is that it incorporates wireless technology that enables the end-user to purchase and download books directly to the device. Of course, you purchase directly from Amazon, which currently offers 110,000 titles digitally, including 90 of The New York Times best-sellers offered at $9.99 each.

Besides a limited title selection, the only drawback of the Kindle (and Sony Reader for that matter) is price. You'll need to shell out 399 clams to get a Kindle in your hot little hands. But don't worry, the cost will be half that soon as the Kindle and other e-readers follow the path of all new technologies that go from expensive and inefficient to cheap and efficient. This is the same path that computers have gone down (and continue to go down). Cell-phones too. E-readers like the Kindle will follow suit. In fact, I predict that one day Amazon will ship the Kindle (or whatever its successor is called) free with your first online purchase.

All books—including every book that has ever been published and survived the ravages of time—will be available in digital format. Many of them will be free. In fact, many older titles are already free via Google Books. Other titles you will purchase and download or access directly from a server on the Internet. E-readers will continue to improve in capability and readability. The components will get smaller. The displays will get better. Soon, they'll be thin "sheets" of digital paper that you'll be able to fold up and put in your pocket. And like the cell-phones of today, everyone will have one, including my grandchildren who, when they visit their Grandpa's house, will marvel at the ton of books he's kept over the years—relics of a past era.