Tag Archives: Digital vs Physical

Can I have both?

In the article “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age”, Ferris Jabr writes about the unique advantages of reading on paper and the disadvantages of reading on digital screens supported by research studies across the nation. The results of these studies show that, because of the taxation on the brain from reading on screens we do not gain as much understanding when compared to reading on paper. The article also talks about how reading on screens may be better for scanning or short readings of digital texts while books are better for in depth reading. But why are we comparing when we can have both. Just like having CDs and digital music, the concept is the same, where CDs are like books and digital music is digital text. With that in mind, it’s been a while since the introduction of digital music and yet the CD is still relevant, so we see that nothing can take away the good old school–but to add on it because of the ever changing world. An example of this is given in the  article “The Cobweb.” by  Jill Lepore. Just like the famous library of Alexandria we now have a web of all webs which is a sort of digital version of the library of Alexandria. Thanks to this Internet archive there is now an alternate and/or additional way of storing, researching and finding information. Notice also that this Internet archive does not take away from a traditional library but uses it as a blueprint to create new avenues in this modern technological age.

Blog #2 Past & Present

The Cobweb was an interesting read to me because it was talking about how delicate a web page can be. From when I was younger till now I would always find dead links from time to time, naturally i just thought probably the web page from the 90’s or something and that the page was dead because the link was so old. Now don’t get me wrong I never thought a web page could last forever but I also didn’t think the average lifespan for a web page was 3 months & change (100 days) I always it would be longer than that. But another thing that caught my attention in the article was the Wayback Machine, the Wayback Machine to me is kind of like a virtual time capsule filled with web pages (and sites) that’ll live on forever but probably won’t ever see the light of day again.
The Reading Brain was particularly interesting to me because this was something I used to think about on my own. Although I don’t like reading for fun but I’ve always preferred physical texts because I felt the physical text was more easy to follow and flipping through the pages felt like walking through an adventure. Basically what I’m trying to say is that flipping through pages in a book is what makes reading reading. I have nothing against reading digitally, I love technology it’s what I major in, I can read an article or two digitally but when it comes to extensive reading eventually my eyes start to hurt and i forget ⅓ or more of what I just finished reading. Reading digitally just isn’t as effective to me as reading a paperback, even though it satisfied my laziness. Now these were my thoughts on digital vs physical reading before the article, so after reading it was a little weird that the article was reiterating my thoughts. It was like the author was reading my mind as I read along.