I remember back when I was growing up and it was a big deal if you had a hard cover book versus a paperback one. Now it seems that hard cover books are in the same category as paperback books. In today’s society, it’s all about books you can read on a Nook or articles that can be found online. In the first paragraph of James Gleick’s article Books and Other Fetish Objects, he describes how he “got a thrill […] when the librarian brought him the first, oldest notebook of Isaac Newton.” The way he described himself reacting towards this hard copy reading, is the same way people react when they achieve a new reading on their Nook. Personally, I prefer reading things that are in a hard copy form. If I have to read something that is online, I will print it out and read it that way. Otherwise, I get distracted and end up doing everything but reading the article.
The way our society is going, there is always something new being put out on the market. And if not’s something new, there’s something being tweaked and added onto the next big technological device. Pretty soon, libraries and book stores will be a thing of the past. In my hometown, there was a Border’s that was going out of business and selling their entire inventory for dirt cheap prices. I can only imagine it is because of the new reading devices that people can use now. The only way people will have books in their homes is if they have had them for years—before the digital takeover.
I'm not really sure I think digitizing is a terrible thing. It saves paper and you can have everything in one place. I never really saw the sentimental value in the physical book. I also value content over the way it is delivered to me. However, I do think that the only way it could be bad is if digital media ends up failing us. In other words, if internet or digital technologies were to be destroyed, we could be in big trouble if we do not have hard copies of documents. Even still, if we were able to just keep a few hard copies, the rest could be recycled and used for better purposes.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your statement that "there is always something new being put out on the market." Just think about social networks: thousands of blogs are updated, hundred of thousands of tweets are submitted, and probably millions of Facebook posts are posted every second. Since we are a "refresh, refresh, refresh" society (you know, where you sit on the same web page all afternoon constantly clicking "refresh" to see the stream of new content), I think it was inevitable that we would eventually want to absorb literature that way as well.
ReplyDeleteI'm guilty of the digitization - I've read the majority of my assignments for this class and others on my iPad, but it does take away from the experience. I feel like a reading experience has a greater impact when additional senses are engaged: the feel of the crisp pages and the weight of the book in your hands; the smell of the ink, paper, and binding glue; the sound each page makes when it turns. All of these sensory observations contribute to our perception of a text - and we are robbed of this perception when we view a digital text instead of a physical book.
I agree that with you that having the actually physical copy of a book is much more satisfying. The unlimited amount of distractions that coincide with owning an iPad or ebook seem to me to be a detriment. There is something rewarding in having a physical copy of a book or article or what have you. Reading a book is extremely personal. Using the actually copy engages me much more than any content online. Some books have wonderful smells, others have character in their spine, and don't get me started on that marvelous "whoosh" sound on the turn of every page.
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