After reading all 5 opinions, I came up with my own thoughts on the topic of e-books. I got something out of everyone’s opinions except for Maryanne W.’s. I got a little lost after she brought up Socrates and Aristotle. Nonetheless, everyone has their own perspective and attacks the question from different angles.
I’ve never read anything off of a kindle or an e-reader but I have read pdf files and assigned readings off of my computer screen for school. Personally, I don’t find myself reading faster or slower than if I were to read off of paper. However, something does happen to me psychologically. Whenever I open a pdf file, I scroll down to see how long it is. If it’s longer than 20 pages, I immediately get turned off and begin to mourn inside. Therefore, reading a book vs. reading online definitely affects me. It’s important to note that reading online or off of an e-book and reading a book or on paper both has its pros and cons, as you can see:
E-Book Pros: It’s comfortable and portable
Cons: It’s awkward flipping through the pages when you have to look up a certain word or passage and the illustrations tend to have poor resolution
Reading on screen Pros: You can look up a word to find any passage or sentence
Cons: You can get distracted and check your email, Facebook, blogs, etc.
Books/reading on paper Pros: You can write in the margins. It’s cheap, easy to read/mark up and “above all else, beautiful” (David G.).
Cons: You can’t look up a word or passage via ctrl F
Thus, reading online or on paper is all about personal preference. Personally, I don’t mind reading a book. Like Gloria M. says, you don’t get interrupted with paper books: “It’s not only an escape into a world of literature but it’s an escape from my digital devices.” I also don’t mind reading online because I can easily look up any word or passage, words I don’t know at Dictionary.com, and it’s portable. However, I do find myself getting distracted when I’m reading online. Before I started writing my response, I checked Facebook once and in between reading, I checked my email to see if I got any word back from the numerous jobs I applied to.
Whether you appreciate beautiful books, like myself, and enjoy having the physical copy in your hands or you enjoy reading off of an e-reader or laptop at a coffee shop, it doesn’t really matter. It isn’t affecting anyone around you nor does it seem to be affecting your brain. Sandra even says that “anecdotal evidence suggests that people may read as quickly on electronic readers as they do on paper. ” Therefore, our brains may not even notice when we’re reading offline vs. online. However, we may deeply engage ourselves with the text when we aren’t distracted by facebook, twitter, email, etc. How can we absorb information if we don’t spend more than 3 minutes on the text and move onto something else? So, that’s definitely something we should take into consideration.
What are your thoughts?
Intro. to Multimedia Comp SP14 