Books Are Redundant!
- Submitted by: godimwas2014
- Views: 61
- Category: Other
- Date Submitted: 10/12/2016 07:32 AM
- Pages: 4
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A strong claim. I’d better explain further: I don’t mean that books, as a tangible item, are redundant, but the way in which we’re accustomed to using them.
A decade or so ago, books were the founts of all knowledge, and one of only a few ways to attain escapism from our daily grind. They represented a route to self-improvement and a better standard of life. Books still deliver all this and more, but it’s us, as readers, who have changed.
Past vs. present
Google is the first place generations turn for information. Rather than schlep down to a library, rifle through index cards (if you’re lucky enough to know the category/area you want to research), then spend an hour or so finding the exact passage in a particular book relating to your query, you can today hunt down the same educational nuggets within seconds, using a search engine. Ask someone under thirty a question they don’t know the answer to, and it’s their mobile you’ll see them pull out, not an encyclopedia.
Fiction books are still used for escapism, and many of today’s younger generations join senior counterparts in their love of tangible paperbacks/hardbacks against digital e-readers and apps - preferring to physically flick through pages and feel more attached to the story. But fiction is not just competing with the standard four channels on the box, as of twenty years ago, but an ocean set to burst with digital programmes, games and films. We can spend our leisure time doing anything we want to.
We don’t need quarantine
It’s important authors understand this shift, and all things clamouring for our attention. Anything going viral in our parents’ generation would be shut away in quarantine, but today we’re heartily hungry for things spread in this manner. There’s so much choice and noise to cut through, that when a cause/news item/debate/product starts to peep out above the dense layer of chatter, it’s pounced upon by swarms of people, desperate to show they’re up on the latest craze, which, in...
A decade or so ago, books were the founts of all knowledge, and one of only a few ways to attain escapism from our daily grind. They represented a route to self-improvement and a better standard of life. Books still deliver all this and more, but it’s us, as readers, who have changed.
Past vs. present
Google is the first place generations turn for information. Rather than schlep down to a library, rifle through index cards (if you’re lucky enough to know the category/area you want to research), then spend an hour or so finding the exact passage in a particular book relating to your query, you can today hunt down the same educational nuggets within seconds, using a search engine. Ask someone under thirty a question they don’t know the answer to, and it’s their mobile you’ll see them pull out, not an encyclopedia.
Fiction books are still used for escapism, and many of today’s younger generations join senior counterparts in their love of tangible paperbacks/hardbacks against digital e-readers and apps - preferring to physically flick through pages and feel more attached to the story. But fiction is not just competing with the standard four channels on the box, as of twenty years ago, but an ocean set to burst with digital programmes, games and films. We can spend our leisure time doing anything we want to.
We don’t need quarantine
It’s important authors understand this shift, and all things clamouring for our attention. Anything going viral in our parents’ generation would be shut away in quarantine, but today we’re heartily hungry for things spread in this manner. There’s so much choice and noise to cut through, that when a cause/news item/debate/product starts to peep out above the dense layer of chatter, it’s pounced upon by swarms of people, desperate to show they’re up on the latest craze, which, in...