I still remember being in 7th grade, and receiving an assessment task for Science. The task was to choose an animal, and find as much information as I could on the chosen animal, presenting it on a large piece of cardboard, with pictures included. So, I went home that afternoon and trawled through the hundreds of Encycolpedia Brittanica and Reader’s Digest books on our bookcase. Some books, dating back to when my parents were teenagers; our home study was an archive for every year since 1973. In fact, every assessment in junior high school was completed by sourcing information from books, because that was how information was sourced five years ago.
Today, however- every single piece of information we may ever need to access can be found by loading the Google homepage. Individuals in our society would prefer to download an application allowing them free access to hundreds of books on their phones rather than actually visiting a book store to purchase a book. For the past two years that I have been at university, I have not touched a single book for information for an assessment- all of it has been online. Is it that we are too lazy to get up and find the information ourselves? The convenience of e-books seems to be making it difficult to choose a bookstore over Amazon.com.
It’s sad to think that professional writers will soon be selling themselves short, offering their books on iBooks for $1.99. But then again, we created this mess didn’t we?
Your story about your childhood is very interesting as it brings back memories of my own. I remember searching through numerous Encyclopaedia’s to find the information for my assignments. I would have all the books scattered across my living room floor and flipping page after page to find exactly what I needed. I would take about 5-10 minutes to find a pacific answer that I was looking for. In the contemporary world I could find this information in seconds, simply by a click of a button. The Internet has revolutionised the way we do everything and E-books and online bookstores is just one area. I think it is unfortunate that many people turned to the Internet for everything these days and do not pick up any books. I know that I have not brought a book or used the library for years and if I have I have only borrowed around 2 book in this time.
ReplyDeleteI personally hate e-books. I hate reading from a screen. I much prefer paper and highlighter than a screen and highlighter tool. That being said I too haven't really used physical books (outside of textbooks) for assignments in the past 3 years.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it is about being lazy though, I think it is for all the information you can get from a book, you can find that and more by staying online and it is much quicker. That and the ctrl+F feature when looking for something specific is hard to beat.
One of the main differences between reading from a screen and reading from a book is that when reading from a screen you are viewing it in a much lower resolution. One of the basics covered in computer science is that reading times on from paper are significantly than those from a computer, despite the fact that each format has identical features (as long you are using the right tools).
ReplyDeleteOne of the other reasons I see books staying around is that the industry has not yet caught up in terms of pricing. Books currently on release cost almost the exact same amount as the e-books, despite there being no cost to the publisher to produce it. There are also often hefty DRM features on the books which is another for my hesitancy in declaring the age of the book over.
However I think that as technology catches up to the point where reading from a screen is like reading from paper and as the industry develops a new model of business focused on the internet then and only then will I think that the age of physical copy books is over.