Agree with NE and Desp, books might be gone but novels are still very much a part of modern life. If nothing else, some of the most successful films and tv series are adaptations of novels, so this ever impatient and fast paced world still relies on them as source material. It's in the best interests of these industries to not let books die. And looking to the future - my generation and those younger - teen fiction is still doing extraordinarily well, keeping young people reading through their teens and young adulthood.

For many, I believe that so long as they don't break the habit in these period, they will never break it. If you're still reading by the time you've started adulthood, you KNOW it serves an important and different purpose to visual media - a slower paced, calmer, more zen stimulus of the imagination.