Press Pushes Hard on 'Death of the Printed Book' Angle, All Based on Ikea Bookshelf Redesign

In case you missed it, over the weekend, the Economist set off something of a firestorm that’s continuing to reverberate this week with their story “Great Digital Expectations,” wherein they wrote that “next month IKEA will introduce a new, deeper version of its ubiquitous ‘BILLY’ bookcase,” followed by their reasoning for the change: “The firm reckons customers will increasingly use them for ornaments, tchotchkes and the odd coffee-table tome — anything, that is, except books that are actually read.”