What do you think? Will codices become obsolete within the near future?

No, there's a plenty big market for codices. I think most people think that the either-or argument is idiotic. There are good points about both printed books and e-books, and plenty of people will continue to buy both.

Not every book will be converted into ones and zeros. The cost of digitization is still prohibitive. So, while new books may be printed and digitized (until we codice lovers die) or only digitized, the old ones who don't have Project Gutenberg volunteers and digitizers working on them will still be 'in print' until they wear out.

Those forests may go into the furnace to provide electrical power for the e-readers and the tablets and the wi-fi, or what comes after them. And paper can be mulched to provide recycled paper and nutrition for new trees. My three year old Kindle is almost obsolete, and recharging it every day is also charging my electricity bill to higher levels.

I don't think we need as many books that are available in either medium. Some of the self published ones aren't worth the paper or bytes used though there are a number of gems among them that would not have been published by the corporate publishers. We need books that are well thought out and well written and edited before they are up-loaded for distribution.

There is still a huge market for physical books, and I doubt that they will become obsolete anytime soon. I, for one, refuse to give up my physical books. Reading on a screen gives me a major headache that I don't get when I'm looking at a printed page. Also, if anything should ever happen and we lose our power grid, how are people going to access information that is stored in an electronic device? During power outages, if you can't charge your Nook or Kindle, you're stuck. I don't have to charge the books that are sitting on my shelf. Also, the electronic versions of books are just not permanent enough. If someone with malicious intent hacks your account and erases the files in your cloud, or attaches a virus to an ebook download, you could potentially lose all of that electronic information. It will take more than a power outage or a virus to out my physical printed books.

If there is ever an apocalypse, and we lose our power infrastructure, those of us who are foolish enough to believe paper books are somehow superior to electronic books will be the only ones left with access to information. I guess I'm glad I'm "stuck in the mindset of the previous millennium."

OH NO! THE AUTOMOBILE IS GOING TO ELMINATE THE HORSE AND BUGGY! WE MUST STOP THIS ABOMINATION!

Edit:

To put it a little more kindly...which do you think is more environmentally friendly: chopping down whole forests to print books which rip and decay (slowly) and end up in landfills, or to convert all those books into ones and zeros which can be deleted whenever one is through with them?

EDIT 2:

@ Ewen...the only reason you prefer paper books is because you were raised with them. Many kids today who are raised reading mostly on tablets and computers view books as wasteful, and rightfully so.

@ Marli...most books printed today are transmitted to printers via DIGITIZED MEDIA. You seem to think the phrase "in print" means that it's a book that exists, having been printed and bound traditionally. "In print" actually means that a publisher is actively printing new copies of the book periodically. And finally, if you think it takes more "tree burning" to run tablets and computers than it does to pulp all those trees into paper and print and bind them into books, you're just not looking at the situation realistically.

People who don't want to give up their old-fashioned paper books are being impractical. If you admit that you have an impractical preference, I have no problem with that. I myself have many impractical preferences, born of socialization and habit. But if you assert that that paper books are somehow superior to electronic books, you are just proving you're stuck in the mindset of the previous millennium. There's nothing wrong with that, but let's not pretend that there is some objective value in reading a paper book that one doesn't derive from reading an electronic one.

Printed books aren't going to die until /everyone/ who's expected to read (this means everyone in a first world country) owns an e-reader.