Books are Technology Too!!

Lorcan’s blog entry about books and the digital shift towards an internet based society is a critical and popular issue because people constantly debate which medium is better.  For example, when I am studying I prefer to read a book or print out a PDF file, rather than just reading from the internet because hard copy print is the “technology” which I prefer.  Moreover, the power of traditional paper and pen is preferable to me because writing mirrors the technology that books possess.  When I contemplate where the internet and electronic multimedia come from I think of books and writing, because the internet has writing and pictures just like a book does, however, the internet makes these images and linguistic characters readily available by a click or a press or a key.  The relationship between the audience and what is afforded to the audience by a book involves the turn of a page or opening a book, just as you can open a page on the internet and scroll to the next page.  Books are the original technology and the internet is the modified technology.

It is amazing how the modified technology has made the original, (books) almost invisible to the general audience, which is society. However, we always must revisit books  because they play an essential role for understanding the internet, YouTube, facebook, and other modern technologies at hand.  How many times have we heard read the book before you see the movie? Lorcan wants the reader to step back and reflect on how books are more technologically advanced than a person would commonly contemplate them to be. Books were the original foundation for education before the digital shift that society experiences at this moment.  As a child, I remember reading books to help me visualize and conceptualize, then, from standard textbooks stem novels, magazines, and even create your own adventure.   Technology has depreciated society’s informational value toward books.

Advertisement