在前不久旧金山举行的出版商大会上,微软负责技术开发的副总裁布拉斯大胆地预言:20年后,纸张将从我们的生活中消失,成为历史的过去。布拉斯说,在软件和硬件飞速发展的推动下,电子出版业将开始腾飞,用不了10年时间,就能令传统出版手段黯然失色。他预计到2001年,销售或赠送的电子图书将超过100万册;次年,电子书籍的数量将超 Blas, a vice president for technology development at Microsoft, boldly predicted at the publisher’s conference in San Francisco not long ago: 20 years later, paper will disappear from our lives and become history. Blaus said that driven by the rapid development of software and hardware, the electronic publishing industry will start to take off in less than 10 years, eclipsing traditional publishing methods. He predicts that by 2001, there will be over 1 million e-books sold or presented; in the following year, the number of e-books will exceed