Ok..of course books are never going to go completely "extinct," but as the internet begins to play more of a central role in our everyday lives we begin to turn our back on books more and more. We spent a good portion of the class Wednesday discussing the impact the internet has made on our lives...on our brain...on our attention span. As people spend more hours scanning the web, jumping from webpage to blog to e-mail message to IM we are unintentionally shortening our attention spans, just as Nicholas Carr explains in his book "The Shallows." So it got me thinking...how often does our generation actually read books? I mean aside from homework assignments, and even then most students have access to some webpage, such as sparknotes, where they can just skim a few paragraphs to get an over view of the material covered in the entire book. But the question is when does our generation read for personal enjoyment? Thinking about this made me realize that our generation only really reads books when the internet is not an option. By this I mean when we are in an airplane or on the beach where internet access is unavailable. Of course there is always going to be a small outlying percentage that do read books on a regular basis for their personal enjoyment, but most of us spend our time surfing the web or creeping on facebook.
However I think it is really important that we take a step back and try to remember the importance of books. In no way am I trying to undermine all the pros the internet encompasses, but I think there is an importance to reading a "good old fashioned" book, at least every once and awhile.
Books are very important because it's a form for someone to live for eternity. In a course that I took about journalism, we learned that when we write and others read our work after we die, we continue to live because our thoughts, emotions, ideas, and opinions live on in the writing.
ReplyDeleteAlso, this connects to my post from two weeks ago about Fahrenheit 451, a dystopia where books are banned and all books need to be burned because those thoughts, emotions, ideas, and opinions that they carry provoke mix emotions for people which is what this dystopian society wants to move away from. Do you think we'll ever go that far as to banning books?
Here's a link to my post about Fahrenheit 451: http://babsonvazquez.blogspot.com/2010/10/fahrenheit-451.html
Interesting point, and i in fact see it in my studying habits too. I do not read recreationally nearly as much as i should and would like to. Consequently, when tests come, I honestly am not able to sit for a long period of time and study, i go watch a little TV, check facebook, make some food. I hate to say it, but I think not reading enough in my upbringing has damaged my ability to study and focus for long periods of time.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a very interesting point. I know that I personally only read at the beach or on an airplane. However, this past summer I tried to read more than just in those usual spots. I think that our attention spans have been affected by the change in the mediums we use to study and just on a day to day basis. I think things such as the Kindle will maybe cause more people to actually start reading regular books again because it makes them more easily accessible.
ReplyDeletePhysical books might actually become exstinct, but I think books online and on iPads/Kindles are just starting to become popular and will probably be around for a long time. It is more important that people still read books in general than how or rather in what form they read them.
ReplyDeleteBooks help our imagination and creativity as well as improving the skill to focus on something for longer times which gets harder and harder in the world we are living in today.
I agree with you Annie, that books might become extinct or something close to it, but I don't think it will be too much of a problem, because everyone will grow up being more and more used to reading on screens instead of physical books.
I hate books. I'm going to be honest, I read the title of this blog, the introduction sentence and that was enough for me. I'm sure the remainder of the blog raised some good points but I just need to go off on my own little tangent for a second.
ReplyDeleteBooks from the time I was in elementary school were always a form of media that was forced upon me. I dealt with teachers forcing me to read books for class, my parents pressuring me to read books for leisure, and even relatives giving me books as gifts thinking I would be appreciative of them. Let me tell you once and for all, books suck!
I understand that some books are informative, some recap historical events, and others that are strictly for pleasure. Yet, I have an extremely low tolerance for books of any type. I would much rather surf the web for online articles and learn via online forums than battling through a thick, wide margined book.