I been looking at a new device just developed. It's the e-reader. There are two common ones on the market, one is a Kindle and the other is Kobo. They are very flat screens which display books, but rather than pages to turn all you do is brush the screen or press a button. At first investigation these may be pretty wonderful devices, they can hold thousands of books, depending on what specification purchased. Their batteries last a long time as well and they can be read in sunlight. Also unlike a newspaper there is no danger of getting news print on hands. However, there has got to be draw backs.
All objects we use are prone to wear and tear, whether a cheap paperback or an expensive e-reader. Every paperback book I read will begin to get bent over pages and start to appear a little tatty. But regardless I love them no matter how tatty they get. They don't require any batteries to be charged to let me read them, and unlike an electronic device I have books quite a few years old. Electronic objects become outdated, a book by it's very nature can not, particularly if it is any good. They are put on a shelf and wait there patiently until their next reading or ad hoc referral.. They get lost, are loaned out and when other people read them they to gain knowledge from them. Libraries are great sources of knowledge. I used to love taking a book out of the library and seeing a list of date stamps on the inside page. A sure indicator of how popular the book is. Knowledge allowed to spread free of charge to multiple enquiring minds. In my own books I will highlight pages or write comments in the margin or the back. I will put post it notes in them so I can refer immediately to a page again which held interest. The act of writing down is in itself a fete of memorising, it is an additional effort, to write something down is to make it more salient and more easily recalled. I doubt whether it is possible to write in an e-book and if you were able to type a comment it wouldn't be the same. The paper book becomes a personal item an affinity grows with it. The size and the thickness of books varies as well, their covers are different. It's always interesting to see what other people are reading by the cover of their book. Just in case it's something you have read yourself and you just might like to strike up a conversation. With a plastic tablet e-reader this would not happen. I am not a prolific reader so why would I want to carry around a thousand books I ask. I simply would not. The printed word is education, whilst the e-reader is a non social self centred educator, you'll not see it left on a seat and discarded because it is out of date. You'll not pick up at a charity shop a thriller someone else has read if it's on an e-reader. Because it will be put away and hidden in some electronic memory, discarded until the battery runs out. At which a thousand books then become nothing. Of absolutely no value at all.
Of all the insidious devices to be invented, to be the most dangerous to humankind, the e-reader may well be it. We could now be stepping backwards to a dark time where book reading no longer becomes a pastime and is no longer available as an educational tool to the masses. Long live the printed page, long save the printed page, clutch it tight and never let it prised from your fingers.
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