Said a congressman, LOL.

source

he is right, but Apple isn't the only one to blame, you have the E-Readers that all the electro companies have made. But the Ipad is the most popular. Sure the thousands upon thousands of jobs will be lost, in the Retail industry for books. Libaries need to position themselves as more better Learning environments with more tech like free Wifi and Laptop friendly locations, and uni/students will come to them. Publishers will most likely go bust because Authors can go direct to the market more easily which isn't so good. Book were an much more reliable resource compared to the internet, but with books going internet, they will lose crediablity and 2 biggest sources of information are lost within an flood of opinion and false facts. 

When that happens, Books will make an come back. Or Educational books will never die out. But fictional will be in more numbers and variety now. 

Only recently the Major Book selling chain here in Australia has gone bust. But so has many many video stores due to priacy and internet streaming of movies. Blockbuster wont last long here. 

Yep. Thats Jesse Jackson Jr. for you.

As ignorant as they come. I can think of a few other pretty stupid ones.

What are you smoking?

Adapt or die. You gotta go with the time instead of blaming anything new.

I blame Wii Fit.

lol, he is so funny 

The bottom line is that people are going to buy what they want and that's that. Things will even out. If you have way too many people buying iPads and reading e-books, the unemployment rate is going to go up and then you'll have loads of unemployed people selling their expensive iPads and reacquainting themselves with the public library again (and in turn generating local jobs and re-stimulating the economy!).

Selling their Ipad's maybe...But their are so many ways to do e-reading..Hasn't the majority of the phones today the possibility to do E-reading?

Well the guy is probably right...  Will be like the the downfall of recond/music stores that costed thousands of jobs while creating less jobs in the sites who let you download music (legal)..

The only thing that is different is that people less enjoy E-reading...Than listening music on their phone;.;  (Atleast that is the impression I get)...

In a way he's right, but at the same time, that's not constructive, and is only addressing symptoms rather than the actual problem. Robotics also elimanates jobs in factories and production plants, mechanical things in general elimate jobs, what would take ten people to dig a hole can be done in an hour by a machine now.

The problem isn't technology, it's the lack of education and globalization equalizing the market. Jobs exist, but you have to have a degree in something to do them. The US doesn't have nearly enough engineers for instance, but math and science education in the US is terrible. Other countries that can do the work for cheaper will also get the jobs that americans used to have. Why pay somebody here 15-20 dollars an hour to do unskilled labor in a factory when you can pay somebody in asia to do it for a half the price or less? The US just isn't competing like it used to in a global market. Blaming technology is just daft.

Yeah the smartphones have e-readers. I have Google Reader and a Kobo app on my phone. I recently discovered that Kindle also has an app for Android. So I think I'm gonna check that out. I haven't really used the e-book apps much though. From what I've heard, the Kindle is the absolute best e-book reading experience and it has impressive battery life. But I don't really feel like forking over for a dedicated e-book reading device when I can just use my smartphone and probably get a decent enough reading experience. Up until now I've been rocking paperbacks but now that I have a smartphone I might as well use the e-book reader apps.

And yeah people of our generation are much more likely to use their phones to listen to music than to read books. Our generation doesn't bother to read many books.