Barnes and Noble is the new Apple store

I predict a day in the future when a visit to Barnes and Nobel will be a virtual experience.

I took a class last fall called Popular Literature, a course where often conversation drifted to the future of books, the future for readers, and the future of the beloved bookstore.

Personal feelings aside, Half-Price Books won't make it much longer. That claim, is completely to my dismay, because personally I love that place. But if anything, B&N will make it through the literature apocolypse with a new attitude - a virtual air about it. A primary focus on all things tablets.

The signs are all there. B&N uses Nooks and whatnot as the focal point for consumers in their stores today, they have to. They won't turn a blind eye like many newspapers of the past attempted. B&N knows that tablets are the future, and soon they will outnumber the binds of books that some of us old souls adore.

I do not currently own a tablet, but even I know that it is only a matter of time. I'm slow to evolve technologically, mostly because I'm broke, partly because I'm a creature of habit. Books are all I've ever really known - and there's a sense of self-discipline that I get from making myself sit down and read a book that I know I could never conjure up on a tablet. However, moving digital is a good thing for our society, if we can manage to look past the big scary change.

Each continent on the planet uses approximately 4 billion trees, (35 percent) of trees every year for industries. As startling as a statistic that is, I do believe that we are getting greener and becoming more environmentally aware.  I can definitely see this becoming a politically-driven agenda topic more so in the future than it already is. We can't afford to do this to our planet anymore. The amount of paper saved from going solely digital as oppose to buying books will change the face of our planet. It's worth paying attention to.

If there's one thing I can say is that there is a future of books, no matter if my hypothesis might be a little off. How they are manufactured will change, how they shape our lives will not....Thank God.