Remember when books were only available in book shops, on loan with your library card or borrowed? Now, they're available in supermarkets, vending machines, courtesy of Amazon and downloadable in various formats. However, the traditional notion of reading a book for educational purposes or sourcing information is frequently sidelined by other speedier forms of garnering information. The avalanche of information available courtesy of the internet has, of course, changed forever how we source information and what and how we read. Various studies have suggested that levels of non required reading i.e. reading for pleasure have dropped to an all time low. However these studies don't always take into account the fact that we continue to read albeit via the variety of different formats now available to us.(http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/feb/07/internet.literacy) There's no doubt that we read differently relying on blogs, newsfeeds, e-zines and e-books, twitter to keep ourselves informed and to follow subjects of interest. There's also been an immense rise in the popularity of audio books (ok not strictly reading); research by the Audio Publishers Association estimates that one in five US households purchases at least one audio book a year. Heathrow's recent innovation, having Alain de Botton as a writer-in-residence there for a week last month, was, in my opinion,inspired. http://lifetravelling.com/2009/09/airport-innovation/ I'm also intrigued by the video/print media fusion in the recent edition of Entertainment Weekly. The 18th September issue contains a video ad featuring previews from the network's TV line up as well as ads from PepsiCo among other companies. The video ad is basically a rechargeable chip with capacity for storing up to 40 minutes of footage and a battery life of approx one hour. I wonder what the next chapter is likely to be?