An idea that I find abhorrent seems rapidly to be gaining traction in the world of books and publishing.</p><p> It is that today’s readers — particularly younger ones — are so impatient, have such short attention spans and are so addicted to the sensory titillations of the video world that they no longer can be attracted and held by the printed word.</p><p> That notion has spawned an expanding array of devices to replace books in the form we’ve known them since a goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press with movable type some 570 years ago.</p><p> The e-book, as these monstrous hybrids are called, is an evolving instrument. First it was just a portable handheld screen upon which the user could summon up projected pages of a desired book.</p><p> Amazon’s Kindle was an early example. It could be carried while traveling, or used on a park bench or in a restaurant, and gave access to an enormous number of titles.</p><p> There’s a certain terror in imagining that a driver rocketing along a freeway, playing music on an iPod while shaving or applying makeup and talking on a cell phone, can now enjoy the further distraction of reading an e-book at 70 miles an hour. </p><p> A recent story in The New York Times examined the trend in depth.</p><p> Subsequent versions of these devices illustrate the words with pictures, or even incorporate short videos that advance the narrative, possibly replacing sections of text, and can permit users to see the people in the tale.</p><p> Some of the quotes in The Times made my skin crawl.</p><p> “It really makes a story more real,” said one proponent, “if you know what the characters look like. Videos add to the experience in a big way.”</p><p> Yes, by all means, prohibit the chance that the reader, by an act of imagination, might picture the characters for himself.</p><p> “You can’t just be linear anymore with your text,” an editor with a Simon & Schuster imprint declared.</p><p> I hope the lady edits more lucidly than she speaks.</p><p> A woman described as a popular romance writer expressed the wish that e-books could be even further enhanced with perfume.</p><p> “I’d like to use all the senses,” she said.</p><p> Right! Bring on the <em>stinking</em> book!</p><p> I readily confess to being a man of another time — one who complained when he came home from somewhere and found they’d taken away his typewriter and put a computer in its place.</p><p> It may be that technology has so ensnared the minds of today’s younger readers that the day will come when true books — printed, cloth-bound and satisfyingly weighty in the hand — will no longer command a significant readership.</p><p> The state of the collective intelligence will be poorer for that. And so will I.</p><p> But anyone bored by a book that doesn’t show moving pictures, play catchy tunes and smell is not among the people my words are intended to reach.</p><p> Borrowing a phrase I once saw in an old-fashioned book, I’m betting there’ll be a sufficient number of my kind of readers around long enough to “get me to the barn.”