Penguin Books Singapore's Managing Director Eddy Teo has spent his entire adult life working in the book publishing business in Singapore. With his first job in the early 1980's, the process of selling books was quite different from how books are sold and distributed today. Most of the selling was done by hand, face-to-face with book buyers, of which there were very few at the time. The local population and government did not put a big focus on literacy and reading so the majority of books were purchased by tourists. Singapore became an independent republic in 1965 and has seen significant economic growth since that time, with education and literacy becoming increasingly important. There has been a major shift in support for literature and most books are now purchased by local readers.
People are not smarter, the internet lies, & just because we can send a rover to Mars doesn't mean we're smarter it means NASA has built intelligence from those who previously studied. I don't know how to spell intellegence correctly, but all I have to do is right click on it to get it right. This means I never have to learn how to spell that word. I am not smarter.