Column: All digital, all too fast
Published Dec. 8, 2009
In an age in which college courses can be taken entirely online and Cyber Monday replaced Black Friday for the biggest shopping day of the holiday season, our generation is supposed to embrace this technological trend and be the pioneers for an all-digital world.
If you are a journalism student, I'm sure you've heard at least a dozen times that the print field is on a declining slope to extinction. Thanks to the Internet, most consumers disregard print newspapers and magazines in favor of their online counterparts.
The appeal of these Web sites is obvious. They offer much more than standard print publications can, such as up-to-the-minute reports, links to other sites with more information and the ability to reach a worldwide audience. Not that I'm complaining much; most of my friends and family members who read this column wouldn't have had access to it if it wasn't for The Maneater's online Forum section.
Aside from news-related publications, even the most popular celebrity gossip and fashion magazines have a solid Web readership. I find myself reading Vanity Fair and Vogue online more than in print, and why not? As a college student with limited funds, I can read the same articles and look at the same photos for free.
Perhaps the most difficult digital movement for me to embrace is the invention of e-book readers, such as the nook by Barnes & Noble. By purchasing this gadget, consumers can download more than a thousand books, newspapers and magazines to read on its (approximately) 7-by-4-inch screen. With access to more than a million titles and its mobility, the nook is one of the hottest gifts of the Christmas season.
Thanks to these innovations, we're stuck in sort of an awkward limbo where we can still acquire print books and other publications, yet we can just as easily download them online. Newspapers and magazines are slowly evolving to Web sites only, and I'm afraid the complete digitalization of books is not far behind. Although it is up to us which method we prefer, we will eventually have no choice but to gain all of our literature digitally. Although I hope that full transition never happens in my lifetime, I am terrified to think about a completely paperless world.
What will happen to bookstores? Libraries? And if our textbooks go all digital, what will we do without the cash we receive during book buyback week? Even if it is only 10 percent of what we paid in the first place, it is still beer — er — gas money.
Call me old-fashioned, but I love the feeling of holding a newspaper in my hands and reading the oversized pages at my leisure. I like the antique smell of library books and looking at the glossy layouts of magazines. I like my personal collection of books, despite how small it is. And I don't know about you, but I would feel extremely uncomfortable bringing an expensive technological gadget to the pool just to read the latest Dan Brown novel.
The environmentally conscious part of me agrees this movement will definitely cut back on the obscene amounts of paper we use and don't bother to recycle. But I don't believe a few extra trees and free space in the landfills will make up for the cultural loss of reading the classics the way they were meant to be read: on paper. After all, most of the old Nancy Drew novels I read growing up were my mom's.