Are ebooks bad for you?
This isn’t a throw away question. Amazon has reported that over the last three months more ebooks have been sold than paper books. The ratio last month was 180 ebooks to 100 paper books. More people are switching to ereaders with the surge in affordable (greatly discounted) devices like the Nook, Kindle, Sony and Kobe readers. But is that a good thing?
Despite Amazon’s startling numbers, that’s a difficult question to answer as The New York Times found out last October. Several different professionals were asked “Does the brain like E-Books? The professionals asked were:
- Alan Liu, English professor
- Sandra Aamodt, author, “Welcome to Your Brain”
- Maryanne Wolf, professor of child development
- David Gelernter, computer scientist
- Gloria Mark, professor of informatics
The answers varied from person to person as the following excerpts show.
Alan Liu,
My research group on online reading (the University of CaliforniaTransliteracies Project) has come to realize that we need a whole new guiding metaphor…. My group thinks that Web 2.0 offers a different kind of metaphor: not a containing structure but a social experience. Reading environments should not be books or libraries. They should be like the historical coffeehouses, taverns and pubs where one shifts flexibly between focused and collective reading — much like opening a newspaper and debating it in a more socially networked version of the current New York Times Room for Debate.
Sandra Aamodt,
Reading on screen requires slightly more effort and thus is more tiring, but the differences are small and probably matter only for difficult tasks…To a great extent, the computer’s usefulness for serious reading depends on the user’s strength of character. Distractions abound on most people’s computer screens…
Electronic readers can be held in a comfortable position, but their contrast is closer to that of a newspaper than to black-on-white print, and illustrations tend to have poor resolution. As technology continues to improve, we can probably expect to see electronic reading become as useful as paper for most purposes.
Maryanne Wolf,
And that, of course, is the problem at hand. No one really knows the ultimate effects of an immersion in a digital medium on the young developing brain. We do know a great deal, however, about the formation of what we know as the expert reading brain that most of us possess to this point in history.
Let us bring our best thought and research to preserving what is most precious about the present reading brain as we add the new capacities of its next iteration.
David Gelernter,
The tools (as usual) are neutral. It’s up to us to insist that onscreen reading enhance, not replace, traditional book reading. It’s up to us to remember that the medium is not the message; that the meaning and music of the words is what matters, not the glitzy vehicle they arrive in.
Gloria Mark,
So what is different? It is not just a matter of comparing reaction times or reading comprehension; it’s the entire experience…Reading online is thus not just about reading text in isolation. When you read news, or blogs or fiction, you are reading one document in a networked maze of an unfathomable amount of information…My own preference? I’d much rather curl up in an easy chair with a paper book. It’s not only an escape into a world of literature but it’s an escape from my digital devices.
I wonder about young people, who do not know of a life before the Internet, and who, growing up “digitized,” might not prefer reading online where they are the pilots of their own information pathways. More and more, studies are showing how adept young people are at multitasking. But the extent to which they can deeply engage with the online material is a question for further research.
These snippets from their articles are similar to the bouncing around and distraction that you get reading on the web. These people have all carefully crafted their responses. They worried about word choice, the flow of paragraphs, and the message of their entire article. Here I’ve come along and snipped passages that are unable to convey the entire depth of their ideas, but in order to engage my online readers, keeping it short is important. It’s too easy to be lured away by the next email, instant message or scrolling sidebar.
Those of us who went to school prior to the advent of desktop computers, have a harder time with the thought of reading primarily using an electronic device whether it be an ebook reader, a Smartphone, or a computer screen. Those born into the world of electronic games, computer research, cell phones, and text messaging may not find reading from one of the afore mentioned devices a big deal.
A recent article in The Los Angeles Times talks about the changes that ereaders are having for adults and students. Students who find their texts books dull can find the same information in other forms online. The article used Emma Teitgen, 12, as an example. She found her chemistry book to be a snoozer and so she found something more appealing, "The Elements: A Visual Exploration". The interactive ebook got her engrossed in the subject. The links took her to more and more information that she probably would never have understood or been interested in in her text book.
Ereading are not only bringing school subjects alive but also allows student and adult readers to connect to interviews with the authors, fan pages. Hard to understand concepts can not only be explained in text but also in video.
As electronic reading devices evolve and proliferate, books are increasingly able to talk to readers, quiz them on their grasp of the material, play videos to illustrate a point or connect them with a community of fellow readers. The same technology allows readers to reach out to authors, provide instant reaction and even become creative collaborators, influencing plot developments and the writer’s use of dramatic devices.
Although bookstores and traditional publishing houses seeing paper book sales drop, the advent of ebooks has breathed new life into out of print books. Rather than paying a fortune to reprint an author’s earlier works, publishers can release them as ebooks. Some of those ebooks include features not available in the previous print editions like videos and author interviews.
Authors that insist that their books only appear in paper versions may find that the absence of an electronic version is costing them quite a lot in lost sales. Although I have read the paperback version of the Dune series, I have them in ebook form since my copies disappeared years ago with multiple moves and loaning books. I can refer back to them at will. I always where to find them and I can do a search to find particular passages and chapters.
I don’t have to worry about their weight the next time I pack up and move. Lugging heavy boxes of books from place to place has not endeared me to helpful friends. I don’t have to worry about them molding or mildewing or taking up too much space or costing too much for storage. My ebooks are always in pristine condition when I sit down to read.
Ebooks are better for your back, and the environment since they don’t require the destruction of forests. CO2 is not emitted from transporting lumber to paper mills or shipping them from warehouses to stores and eventually to resellers. The environmental benefits are many.
Ebooks have evolved the learning and reading processes from limited paper to vast digital possibilities opening up new avenues of enquiry, providing multiple resources on any topic and adding new dimensions to the reading experience.
Are ebooks bad for you? It depends on what generation you ask. My grandmother saw the advent of indoor plumbing and automobiles. She never saw an ebook, although her house was filled with books. I saw the first man to walk on the Moon and the advent of personal computers and own thousands of ebooks. What will the kids of today say? Possibly, “we saw the demise of paper books and carry an entire library in our pockets.”
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