Goodbye 'real' books, Hello E-books ?
The uprising digital age on affecting the evolution of books in the 21st century.
(i)
“The Evolution of the Book” by Julia Dreyfuss
To us, we’ve understand that producing a book requires way much more effort compared to the easily accessible E-books. From the choosing of paper material, to the ink usage and the printing process, the E-book could never be able to imitate that. It really does defeat the purpose of reading a book because it definitely creates a different sense of attachment towards both versions of “books”. Now in the video, it clearly stated that a book consists of paper, type and a cover. But E-book should not be considered as an actual book as it does not meet the qualifications, but rather a platform that shows information or entertainment.
“The Future of the Book: Great Ideas or Terrible Ones?”
The Future of Books talks about the steps of integrating books in the future. They have stated a few steps in this video where it will make reading experience more exciting and fun than it used to be. First is Nelson. It talks about how we can read and at the same time also get connected to other information about the content we are reading. It gives readers access to read feedbacks and comments on the book they are reading. This gives reader a much deeper understanding to what they are reading. Secondly, Coupland creates a community for people to read books. It connects people to one another through their interest in different genre of books. Lastly, Alice gives chance to reader to contribute to a story line. This makes the story much more engaging to the reader. Hence, due to the digital age we live in now, the steps really do help readers to get to engage more to what's already happening and the changes that are yet to come.
“A Roundable Discussion on the Future of the Book and the Traditional Publishing Industry”
Charlie Rose -A Discussion about the History and Future of Books. This video talks about the different perspective of printed books and e-books. There was Jane Friedman, Jonathan Safran Foer, Tim Oriely and Ken Auletta giving their own opinion on this matter. They were discussing on ebooks or printed books is better and how it affect each other. Jane Friedman said books are convenient and is much easier to access compared to the printed ones, and because of this, authors can get feedback and statistics of readers much more easily. On the other hand, Books should be read in certain place in certain environment which is like having a conversation. Jonathan Safran said “ It is very hard to have an intimate conversation in a public place. It is very hard to have a slow conversation in a fast settings or when you are rush.”
Overall, the change of century has affect the value of traditional books. It's really debatable on which deserves more favor.
(ii)
We disagree that the future of the traditional book publishing looks bleak and will be replaced by digital publications. This is because when the word appears in digital publications, it is inside the glass screen but the traditional book uses the paper. Paper compared to a touchscreen is very widely in tactile impression. When we are flipping the pages on the touch screen, it does not give you the same feeling as flipping through the pages of a physical copy of a book.
The traditional book publishing will become few but it is difficult to replace it with digital publications because we seek visual effect. In my experience, reading a book on a screen for about 30 to 40 minutes makes my eyes feel weary and in pain. However, reading a physical copy of a book does not have the same negative effect as the lighting is controlled by the environment around me. The Apple company has tried to digitalise the looks of a book into the screen by introducing a new function on iPad Pro, that can change the screen mode to the colour of a paper (the screen will change to yellow colour), however it still does not do justice to the feeling of reading a physical copy of a book.
Oftentimes, people who love reading books tend to have shelves and rows of books they have read. This shows that books hold more commemorative values compared to the e-books. During the primary school age, we tend to buy the physical copy of a novel. The use of highlight pen and highlighting the sentence holds a memory and experience. It's a way of having contact with the book.Generally, we do not prefer highlighting the sentences and bookmarking the e-books, If one really likse a book, thus will choose to go to a book shop and find a physical copy to consider as collectibles.
We do believe that the future of the paper book readers will decrease but it will not be replaced by digital publications. The paper books are still loved by many readers. If the digital publications will replace the paper books, why do libraries bother to still have a lot of paper books as reference material? Even if we can find the information online, why do people still need to print out the information from online books and combine it to be a textbook? The digital publication is just used to satisfy consumers of different requirements in a faster pace. Even though there are online e-books or information, our homes still have a bookshelf, it doesn't matter how big it is, this proves that digital publications can’t replace the traditional book publishing.