Reading Books In Modern Technology

One of the several advancements that technology has enabled in recent memory, is in reading. Electronic media now includes e-books, which has several advantages over traditional media. E-books are now ubiquitous over the internet, and many swear by them. While I acknowledge the use case of e-books - and you may feel free to call me old-fashioned here - there are many instances where I prefer having an actual physical book in hand as opposed to reading it off the screen.

Today, I will attempt to dive into the differences, advantages and disadvantages one medium has over the other.

E-books

These are basically electronic files which require a reader to translate into text and illustrations. Some of them may be in the free PDF format, and others in proprietary formats.

E-books

User Interface. Some readers have a search feature that will search for keywords within the text, and bring the user to that place in the book immediately. When doing research, this is invaluable. The bookmark functionality is related, and will bring the user to that specific place in the book to revisit. Traditional books have a physical bookmark feature, at most, and depending on how it's done, may damage the book.

Accessibility. Not all users are able-bodied. Some are visually impaired. However, readers can come with a voiceover feature that reads the book for the user. Traditional books have no such feature unless someone else reads the book for them. Braille is a good solution, but requires a whole new book created just for that purpose.

Physical storage. A staggering number of texts can be stored on the cloud or even just on the device, and recalled instantly with a click. No matter how large the book is, it all weighs the same on the reading device. For traditional books, each book takes up space and has weight, as is the case for all physical matter. This represents a challenge when attempting to store large numbers of them. And searching for a book takes way more time.

Environmental concerns. When all the books are in electronic format, all the user really needs to think about are carbon emissions when using electricity. For printed media, the paper used in the creation of a book, kills trees as well.

Lastly, you will never ever get a paper cut from an e-book.

Traditional books

There's no real need to elaborate what these are, unless you were born in the last five years, in which case you would hardly be reading this blog anyway, would you? Suffice to say, this refers to books with actual physical spines, pages and covers. Actual print.

Traditional media

Texture. Some people swear by the sensation of actually having a book in hand. The weight of it. The smell. The physical act of turning a page. This is not something that an e-book could reasonably reproduce. Also, the visual of having an entire library is a lot more awesome than simply having lots of files on an e-book reader.

Better for eyesight. Looking at the screen of an e-book reader may not be the best thing in the world for poor eyesight. This can be mitigated by better reader settings, though.

Cheaper to replace. This is largely contextual. Some books can be extremely rare and expensive. However, the average book certainly costs less to replace than an an e-book reader.

Final thoughts

E-books are here to stay - there's no question about that. But there's a place for traditional media too. Sadly, with newer generations being born into a world dominated by the Internet, actual physical books may eventually become a thing of the past. Hopefully, I'll be long gone by then.

Don't read too much into this,
T___T