Indeed, it’s a trite argu­ment first expressed by the tra­di­tion­al literati on Day One some­time back in the 1990s. But I doubt that in the future tac­til­i­ty will dic­tate how we read. Yet I’m now will­ing to con­cede tac­til­i­ty is a fac­tor.

What about the tac­til­i­ty of tablets? My first tablet many years ago was an iPad 2 10-inch. For a num­ber of rea­sons, I found read­ing books on the iPad very sat­is­fy­ing, a sur­prise real­ly. Not least of all is that it felt good. It was easy to hold and about the size of one book page. A tac­tile rev­e­la­tion!

But the iPad seemed a lit­tle too big, a lit­tle too heavy, and a lit­tle too thick. Minor com­plaints. But then tac­til­i­ty itself is ulti­mate­ly a minor con­sid­er­a­tion.

My next tablet was a Sam­sung Tab 2  7‑inch which I came to feel was a bet­ter size. When I reached for a tablet to read, watch a movie, or do a lit­tle casu­al web surf­ing, I seemed to reach for the Tab 2, not the iPad 2. This had to do with size, not Apple or Android. Yet the Tab 2 seemed a lit­tle too small, too heavy, and too thick. What now?

Apple, of course, offers tablets com­pa­ra­ble to Sam­sung: thin, light, and ele­gant. And oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers also make com­pa­ra­ble tablets.

So tac­til­i­ty does mat­ter. The prob­lem print­ed books have, as I now see it, is that the Tab S3 has supe­ri­or tac­til­i­ty to any book I’ve ever read. It’s the thin­ness; it’s the one-book-page size; and it’s the light weight. Thus, I now cau­tious­ly agree that tac­til­i­ty is an issue with read­ing, but the Tab S3 and com­pa­ra­ble tablets win for me, not print­ed books. Of course, there are and will be many more tablets like the Tab 3: the size you want and thin­ner and lighter.

The orig­i­nal Kin­dle uses liq­uid ink, not an LCD back­lit screen. The liq­uid ink needs light in order to pro­vide easy read­ing. Thus, it works well in sun­light (e.g., at the beach) and in well-lit rooms dur­ing the day. At night indoors, it needs a lamp close by. The more ambi­ent light in the room, the brighter the lamp needs to be. How­ev­er, if the ambi­ent light is bright enough in the room, a lamp is not need­ed. This is a dig­i­tal read­ing sys­tem that favors a sub­stan­tial light source. It attempts to dupli­cate the read­ing of a white paper page.

The tra­di­tion­al flat screen LCD screens (e.g, com­put­er mon­i­tor) are back­lit. With pro­longed read­ing they tend to cause eye­strain, par­tic­u­lar­ly with black type on a white back­ground. Peo­ple gen­er­al­ly don’t like to read much on com­put­er mon­i­tors (includ­ing lap­tops). And the pri­ma­ry rea­son is eye­strain. There is a lack of con­ve­nient screen con­trols for many desk­top com­put­ers and the soft­ware that goes with them. As a result, you can­not be con­ve­nient­ly dim the back­light to avoid eye­strain, and most of the soft­ware doesn’t fea­ture non-white back­grounds for text. Nonethe­less, more con­ve­nient screen-con­trol fea­tures are start­ing to appear in new mon­i­tors, oper­at­ing sys­tems, and soft­ware, which is good news for users.

Smart­phones and tablets (e.g., Kin­dle Fire) also have LCD screens. Because they are back­lit, they are very read­able when out of the sun­light, par­tic­u­lar­ly indoors and at night. They need no exter­nal light­ing, such as a lamp, even in the dark. And in sun­light, you can read LCD screens in the shade unless there’s a lot of ambi­ent glare.

Phones and tablets, such as the iPhone and iPad, how­ev­er, solve the eye­strain prob­lem. They are designed for read­ing as well as for oth­er dig­i­tal activ­i­ties. One can eas­i­ly adjust the back­light­ing to avoid eye­strain. Some soft­ware (e.g., read­ing apps) adjusts the back­light­ing or back­ground col­or auto­mat­i­cal­ly and even fil­ter out harm­ful blue light. Many bookapps or ebook read­ers fea­ture non-white read­ing back­grounds, and some soft­ware even pro­vides sev­er­al choic­es of read­ing-friend­ly back­grounds.

Con­sid­er also the stor­age bonus. Each sum­mer I went to my home away from home for two months and lugged three full box­es of books with me. Each year the books got heav­ier and the gas to trans­port them got more expen­sive. At home with five floor-to-ceil­ing book­shelves, I have run out of space for books and have an addi­tion­al four full box­es of books in my office—more in my garage. At my sum­mer place, where there are no book­shelves, I used to stack the books on the floor. After the sum­mer of 2013, I decid­ed, no more print­ed books.

Tablets and phones can hold hun­dreds of books or more depend­ing on how much mem­o­ry one wants to buy. Mem­o­ry cost much less than book­shelves and takes up no room. Tablets and phones seem des­tined to free up tens of mil­lions of square feet of floor space nation­wide now devot­ed to book­shelves.

But books are cheap, and tablets are expen­sive, right? Not real­ly! Tablets are bare­ly a decade old, and a new tablet with amaz­ing res­o­lu­tion and col­or is at lit­tle as $50.

But from a pover­ty stand­point, $50 may be expen­sive. Nev­er­the­less, most orig­i­nal tablet own­ers trade up for new­er mod­els and flood the pre­owned (used) mar­ket with plen­ty of nice qual­i­ty tablets avail­able at a low cost (e.g., under $20 on eBay). There is no short­age of tablets for any­one, rich or poor, who wants one. More than half of US house­holds own at least one tablet.

As for smart­phones, over two bil­lion peo­ple own them, a fig­ure that’s esti­mat­ed to grow to four bil­lion in just a few more years. Over 75% of US adults own a smart­phone.

Tablets and phones facil­i­tate com­fort­able and handy read­ing as well as clut­ter-free and space-sav­ing con­ve­nience. If you don’t own a tablet now, you may soon. And you prob­a­bly already read on your phone. The reduced cost of books (i.e., ebooks) for poor peo­ple who use tablets and phones are facil­i­tat­ing a boom in learn­ing and lit­er­a­cy.

Indeed, phones and tablets will facil­i­tate a new age of read­ing, spread­ing Guten­berg’s move­able type to every per­son on earth. World­wide lit­er­a­cy is the high­est it’s ever been (over 85%) and grow­ing high­er.