Thing 20: Books, or Not Quite Books as We have known Them But Will Possibly Know Them Better in the Near Future, Or Not

So the age old issue of the future of the printed page rears its head. And by age old I mean in the last ten years or so. There was strong push towards digitalization, which is still happening. But it does seem that some of the earlier predictions that seemed so dire are not really coming around as fast as originally thought. In my best estimation, books in the print form still have some life left as a viable medium. I wouldn’t bother with a prediction on this, it could be 20 years, it could be 100. I was under the impression that the up and coming generation would little use for such things, but I just spent some time talking to a high school student this week, and said student still prefers to read off of a page than a screen. My 10 year old daughter prefers to read a paper book over the computer screen, so I think the medium of the paper book will hold on for a while yet.

Research books and text books on the other hand, I can totally see better electronic implications in how one transverses the info. It is a faster medium to gain precise location of subjects with an item, as well as faster cross reference capability. I do see the appeal in this arena of information. It is the pleasure reading that will help maintain the print world. Considering the amount of paper used though, in time the need to use less will become more of an issue.

Ok, so on to the articles we read. The 4 pager on how and what we read is interesting. There is validity to the thought that internet reading does form some level of cognitive development, and should be considered in how we evaluate what a young person is reading. Yes, the skill set that internet users are developing will be increasingly more and more influential in the work place of the future. The internet has been born, and now has a life of its own. It changes, grows, morphs and reproduces. It consumes. In many ways this highway of information it alive, and how we interact with it will and use it will be a determining factor in the future success of the work place. Yes the internet is a tool, and in my personal opinion should remain in that capacity. But as it stands, that is just my opinion and many people are already allowing how they interact with this tool to influence their lives. It’s like when the network goes down here at the college, everything grinds to a halt because most of what we do now in the library is so inter driven. Out catalog is online, in the Community College arena our LMS is online and we lose access when the internet goes down. It is a tool, but a central one that directly dictates how productive we can be at any given time. So what happens when we have given over to using the internet to live our lives?

In regarding the rest of the article, yes I do see why some people would argue that internet reading is as good as reading a structured book, such as literature. I don’t agree that it should be a replacement for most people. Instead I think that both should be utilized, but reading formal prose is very important. Disregarding a proper structure devalues the reading experience. Students are not going to get a good feel for how to write well by reading poorly written prose. What you read will affect how you write, how you read, and how you process information. Not everything needs to be in tiny snippets. People are becoming impatient enough in society with furthering the cause by reinforcing not reading well structured text. Part of why I think many young people don’t read books as much as they could is because so much-the internet is a big part of this-is so instant gratification oriented these days. Books take time and investment, it’s not an in and out thing.

Then we come to the argument that print is the back bone of information gathering, and many of the newer info storage mediums are flimsy or unreliable. I can see this, but when you start to think about how much info is in bare electronic form at this point, then you start to think about the file sharing that is going on with much of it. For every copy made, there could be thousands of copes remade and remade without the loss of quality that used to accompany that sort of transfer. If digitalization is being done on certain items, and no distribution is happening, they are being horded, then we see the very possible need of paper backup, in the case of file corruption. It comes down to the need for wide spread distribution of texts for a wider spectrum of coverage. If the ideas are held close, then they stand a better chance of being lost. That is where time and public domain will be the ultimate keepers of these ideas. Copyright and idea control will be the barriers. I understand the need for copyright and agree with it. Intellectual property is a huge issue, and the continuation of literature depends on it. Great writers don’t get to be as good at their craft when they only do it on the weekends after the kids are in bed. Authors and artists need to be able to create to be creative. Copyright provides that.

We’ll call this part 1. Next I will examine all the sites I checked out.