In chapter
six of Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, entitled
“The Very Image of a Book,” Carr has
a few interesting points he makes on the recent rise in popularity of
e-readers. The very nature of what an e-reader is, that is to say as a new
medium for enjoying print media, naturally begs the comparison between printed
books and e-books. Though Carr examines both positive and negative aspects to
e-readers, I found myself tending to agree more with Carr’s praise for
e-readers and e-books.
As a society that’s continually
reliant on newer and newer technologies to continuously make tasks easier and
more accessible, it only makes sense that the natural technological progression
of printed books could only lead to books accessible in an electronic format.
This of course manifests itself in the many now-popular e-readers like the
Kindle and Nook. E-readers like these redefine the way people think of enjoying
a book or a collection of books. Though reading an e-book on an e-reader is
similar to an actual book in terms of clarity, thanks to the new technology
like E Ink that Carr mentions, the differences become apparent when you throw
Internet connectivity to the mix. With de-facto Internet connectivity
integrated into many of these devices, it opens the possibility to assimilate
online content into the e-books themselves. These “connected e-books” allow
readers to become further immersed into the content of the e-book by making
content relevant to the e-book easily accessible from within the text.
With the use of hyperlinks on
certain key words, readers are able to easily locate additional related content
containing information or background knowledge on those topics. Because the
content is able to be accessed on the same device, further exploration on a
potentially unfamiliar topic becomes quick, easy, and very accessible. The
ability to be able to find additional relevant information so easily adds a
completely new element to the experience of reading a book. It allows readers to
more fully understand the topic of a book without being limited solely to the
content within the book itself.
An additional benefit to these
devices being connected is the social possibilities it provides. In my opinion,
the integration of social media into e-readers will have much the same affect
as the integration of social media in music. In much the same way that services
like Spotify publicly share and allow others to comment on information like what music a user has been
listening to, similar services could seek to
share which e-books that a user has been reading. People connected to that user
would be able to see that information and then be able to easily comment on it
themselves and have the ability to begin a discussion on that book through
social media. As Ben Vershbow is quoted by Carr to have said to this affect,
“’Soon books will literally have discussions inside of them, both live chats
and asynchronous exchanges through comments and social annotation.’” Being able
to easily begin a social media-wide dialogue on a book allows for the
possibility a sort of “virtual book club” that doesn’t have to be limited by
the normal restraints of distance. Users from all over the world can share
their opinions and collaborate on new thoughts about the book or about the
content.
In my opinion, the ability to
immerse data from the Internet into the traditional format of a book allows for an overall better experience in reading
and enjoying a book.
Eric Weiss
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