The Swaying Beauty

The books lay the solid foundation for the being of our cultural identity.Throughout thousands of years of civilization, the paper book played an irreplaceablerole of an accelerator. However, the coming of the digital age has brought a globalstorm which will reform people’s lifestyle. Inevitably, as a new product of the digitalage, the digital publishing is vigorously challenging the traditional way of reading,and swallowing the former ivory tower of contemporary readers. Subsequently, thewonderful feeling of reading the paper book and turning over page by page is slippingby, and this is really frustrating for people who is fond of reading books. The paperbook has already been caught in an embarrassing situation, and the future is not sopromising. What kind of opponent has the paper book faced? How can it overcomethe difficulty? Will the paper book simply die out or survive? In this thesis, I do notwant to discuss too much about the right or wrong and life or death of the paper bookand electronic book, which has already been a popular topic ever since the term"electronic book " was born last century. I only want to calm down in the surgingwaves of electronic books, and rediscover the goodness of paper books. It is also myaim to find out how and why the paper book is no just a microcosm of the culturalcarrier in time, but also a profound cultural symbol of human civilization and apowerful and strong accelerator of social civilization. If we do not get to know wellabout the being and development of the paper book, it is groundless and meaninglessfor us to predict its future, save it from disappearing or even talk about the meaning ofits existence to the world. Faced with the threatening coming of the digital media,how could the paper book survive? We can try to embed a totally new notion withdemands of the time in the paper book, and give it a new meaning of existence.Therefore, the paper book will gain the peerless strength and vigor, and explore a newand bright future for itself. The paper book would get through all the difficulties andget a new beginning to prove its very existence and value.