Goodbye, physical entertainment.

    Recently, I've been talking to my mom about physical books and libraries, both are things that she is used to and loves with a passion. She visits the local library almost everyday to get books and always ends up paying late fees because she forgets to return a book or she hasn't finished it yet. I've repeatedly told her that digital books or "eBooks" will take over, but she is still skeptical. For whatever reason that I still cannot understand, she believes that there will always be demand for physical books. Now, this may be true, but the demand will get smaller and smaller as time goes by.

  I've even gone as far as to tell her that libraries will be gone within a decade, which she thinks is unbelievable. Gen Z (Born 1990's through early 2000's) isn't very interested in physical media anymore, and that's going to get worse with incoming generations. Why? We no longer want to wait for anything, we want it immediately, and the internet is filling our desire. Why would you go to the store or library to get a book or movie, when you can download instantly on your Kindle or other device? Whenever I want to watch a movie, I just hop on my Apple TV and watch it instantly, no need to go anywhere or wait for anything. Remember the days when you had to go to Blockbuster for a movie? Now that we have services like Netflix and iTunes, going to a store just to get a movie is horrible.

  How much longer will physical entertainment like books and movies be around? Well, I'm not really sure. What I can say is that libraries need to get ready for a rough future.