Hard Cover vs. Hard Drive
Will Electronic Publications Ever Replace the Book?
At one time our world was strictly an oral culture. We recited stories, kept records stored in our memories. When writing was invented did we suddenly stop speaking to one another or remembering facts? Of course not. At any given moment we can recall, from memory, names, dates, and places that we have committed to memory. When the printing press was invented, did we stop writing by hand? Again, no. So, why would we stop reading a book just because we have access to the World Wide Web? All previous information technologies of language, rhetoric, writing and printing are technological in themselves (Landow 218). These technologies—writing, speaking, typing—may seem second nature, but given time so will the Web.
There are reasons for choosing a book over the Internet. To make that choice, first you must ask yourself what material you want to read, and why you want to read it. Then you can more easily discover the best medium to read it on. "It appears that electronic publications are generally either read by different people than those who read printed works, or are used by them differently…or as compliments, but not competitors (Pang 344)." If I want driving directions, for example, I could pull out my atlas and look through the pages of roads I’ve never heard of and landmarks I have ever seen. Or, I could go to www.mapquest.com and simply type in my starting point and final destination and get exact directions and mileage along with a map of that specific area in a matter of seconds. This is just one instance where the web is the choice over a book. "A great many—perhaps most—books do not contain literature, the arts, history, or even...
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... distinction, I’m not sure. Maybe I have more respect, even a sense of duty, to the classical writers. At any rate "the movement to embrace new technology will not be a movement from something natural or human to something artificial—from nature to technology," and George Landow puts it, "since writing and printing books are about as technological as one can be (Landow 219)." The World Wide Web has just given us a different forum to experience text we have come to love and depend on.
Works Cited
Tribble, Evelyn B. & Anne Trubek, ed. Writing Material: Readings from Plato to the Digital Age. New York: Longman, 2003.
Landow, George, "Twenty Minutes into the Future, or How Are We Moving Beyond the Book?" Tribble & Trubek 214-26.
Pang, Alex Soojung-Kim, "The Work of the Encyclopedia in the Age of Electronic Reproduction." Tribble & Trubek 343-51.
Goldberg, David Theo. “If Technology Is Making Us Stupid, It’s Not Technology’s Fault.” Blog. Digital Humanities. August 16, 2010. Gooch and Suyler. in Argument. Avenue of the Americas, New York.2011. 301-03. Print.
It is like a tag on a shirt that keeps bothering your tender skin, it is the reason why you rip the tag off and make your own choices while walking into the unknown land of the wilderness, striving for the adventure that has dire consequences if executed improperly. Walking the unknown land of Hades abyss might have taken the sensitive life of one man, but it was done in a blaze of glory with no regrets. This man of course is Christopher McCandless in the book, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, which is based on a true story. In the book, McCandless strives for the cold Alaskan journey into the wild to satisfy his final thirst for the wilderness but tragedy strikes and it ends by him losing the most valuable thing to him, his life. Chris McCandless had exceptional reasons for vacating the life he lived which are also justified; he was also was not foolish for leaving that life and the outcome of his journey was a triumph and not a tragedy.
Writing with Readings and Handbook. 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2013. 52-57. Print.
Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. Literature and the Writing Process. Eds. Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X. Day, and Robert Funk. 4th Ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice, 1996. 999-1008.
The introduction of the printing press changed society permanently. Along with this invention came the emergence of mass production of texts. Suddenly, information could be efficiently replicated, thus facilitating the dissemination process. Widespread alphabetic literacy, as Havelock states, could finally become a reality. Print media, however, are fundamentally restricted by their physical nature. Enter the Internet, arguably modern society’s greatest technological advancement, with its ability to digitally recontextualize the written word. Again, forever changing the nature of communication. This paper will focus on the web’s functional, social, and cultural remediations of print media. It can be argued that the Internet is a modernized version of the printing press. The web created an explosion in production, self-published content, and new forms of machine art. Through contrasting physical and digital print media, it will be shown that the Internet enhances aspects of the printing press in defining itself.
Plato. The Works of Plato. Trans. Irwin Edman. New York : The Modern Library, 1983.
The internet is ever changing, and so our minds, but can the internet mold our minds? Nicholas Carr and Michael Rosenwald support the idea that the reading we do online is making it harder to be able to sit down with a good book. In their papers they discuss the downfalls of using the web. While on the other hand author Clay Shirky challenges that thought in his piece. Shirky directly battles the idea that the internet is damaging our brains by suggesting that internet use can be insightful. In this essay I will evaluate all three articles and expose their strengths and weaknesses then add my own take on the situation.
Meyer, Michael, ed. Thinking and Writing About Literature. Second Edition. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001.
We live in a time where technology is at the center of our society. We use technology on a daily basis, for the simplest tasks, or to aid us in our jobs, and don’t give a second thought to whether these tools are actually helping us. Writers such as Kevin Kelly and Clive Thompson argue that the use of technology actually helps us humans; whiles writers such as Nicholas Carr argue that technology affects people’s abilities to learn information negatively.
"Plato." Literature of the Western World, Volume 1. 5th edition by Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 2001. 1197-1219.
Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. Literature and the Writing Process. Elizabeth Mahan, Susan X Day, and Robert Funk. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, 2002. 977-986
Social anxiety disorder is also known as social phobia. It is defined as the fear of social situations that involve interaction with other people. It is the fear and anxiety of being judged and evaluated negatively by other people or behaving in a way that might cause embarrassment or ridicule. This leads to feelings of inadequacy, self-consciousness, and depression. The person with social anxiety disorder may believe that all eyes are on him at all times. Social anxiety disorder is the third largest mental health case issue in the world, and it can effect 7% of the population (15 million Americans) at any given time.
Plato. The Republic. Trans. Sterling, Richard and Scott, William. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1985.
Baron, Dennis. “From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literary Technologies.” Writing Material. Ed. Evelyn Tribble. New York. 2003. 35- 52.
Rosen, senior editor if New Atlantis, on her essay published in Wilson Quarterly in autumn 2009 “In the Beginning Was the Word,” points out how digital technology, especially in communication and entertainment, affects negatively on our lives socially and cognitively. She believes that although technology might appear as sign of our progress as humans, it is withdrawing us from the core literature. Rosen explains th...