Back to the Future
It is obvious that the way people communicate has changed. I remember back in grade school when we were sent to the library to check out books in order to do research for projects. However, as I got older, things began to change. Search engines like Google and Yahoo began to form and collect data. Students could now get all the information they needed just sitting there, listening to music and watching television. Kids became lazy and just used computers to get information.
In the case of the University, I don't know if libraries are going to be used for research anymore. The University has put everything they have online and if you want something you can rent it and pick it up. Soon I don't think books will even be in libraries. We'll use them for heat!
The American way is to be lazy and it is obvious that we are headed this way when we find it hard to walk ten or twenty minutes to the library. When a teacher asks for a scholarly source, we use Ebsco or Academic Search Premier to do the research for us. I think that people need to realize how important libraries really are and will regret it when they are gone.
... See my Tabblo>
In my Tabblo I tried to show how we as a culture are moving away from the use of libraries to the internet cafes. We are not willing to walk to a library and do reputable research. Instead we look at Ebscohost or Academic Search Premier and let the Internet do the research for us. It is almost un-American to use a library. If we use the library and not the internet we are looked at as old fashioned and not with the times. If this trend continues the only thing books will be good for is to burn (as in Fahrenheit 451).
It begs the question, "Should books even be printed?" Should we just start putting books online? It would help save trees and make it easier to access. But when publishers tried this there was a negative response. What do people want? Books are falling into the back, "Even on the crudest, most materialistic standard involving financial returns, we no longer find it at the center of our culture as the primary means of recording and disseminating information and entertainment" (Langow, 8) People want their news and information quick. Newspapers and news shows are dying out while the Internet and blogs have replaced how information is released to the public
However, this advancement in technology is not necessarily a bad thing. We are able to talk to people around the worlrd because the Internet's language is always the same. Although he is against this change, Berkerts puts it well when he states that, "the transition from the culture of the book to the culture of economic communication will radically alter the ways in which we use language on every societal level...traditions of print literacy will gradually be replaced by a more telegraphically "plainspeak" (70).
The world needs to realize while it is important to constantly improve technology, we should also realize the necessity of books and the usefulness they can bring.
Comments
Your post is a little more anti-tech than I feel, but I see what you're saying. I'm right on the precipice between rejecting things like text messages and google-research methods. I think, however, that even still google is far from being regarded as a scholarly, and well-respected source, of information. And things like academic search premier may drastically increase accessibility to research materials, but doing the research for you seems a bit of a stretch. Most of the PDF files to be found on sites like Project Muse, J-Stor, or Academic Search Premier, come from actual printed sources. So the information from print to zeros and ones hasn't really changed other than in it's manifestation. In this way, academia can feel safe in it's hermeneutic tree-castle for a little longer. Remember, like in the Birket's article, Books are technology too.
Posted by: Andrew Ranallo | March 24, 2007 12:41 PM
I for one am personally not all that broke-up that libraries may go away. Of course, I don't think that will happen. But it could. I think a better use of my tax dollars is having the material available on-line where I can find it quickly, read it, and print it if I'd like to. If book collectors want the fine leather bound books, fine. I just don't want to pay for them.
Posted by: Dale | March 24, 2007 01:35 PM
One thing that strikes me about the usefulness of books is that digital materials seem more fragile somehow. Books, vinyl records, magnetic tape, and film can all still be used, even if they're damaged. They disintegrate slowly, a bit at a time, and can be taped/spliced back together when they break. In my experience, once a CD, DVD, or computer file is damaged, it's unfixable and instantly becomes useless. Not to mention that digital content is inaccessible when an interpreting machine-reader breaks, a server is down, or the electricity goes out.
Posted by: e_rose | March 25, 2007 12:59 PM
I agree with you that computers and televisions have made people lazier. I think that it's part of human nature to use the easy route when it comes to certain things. Because of our high reliance on technologies such as cars and the Internet, it is an inconvenience to go to the library for research when it came be done from the comfort of our home. I agree with you that people have become lazier, but I also think that it made us more efficient and we have more time on our hands to do more leisure activities.
Posted by: Natalya Goncharova | March 25, 2007 07:14 PM
Just because the technology exists to make books obsolete doesn't mean computers should totally replace them. Books are far less expensive for one, and it would be hard to get people to totally replace their books with electronics.
Posted by: Carl Cassel | March 25, 2007 08:31 PM
Untill this, I never even thought of the possibility of libraries no longer being utilized. But I completely agree with you. In my college career, I've only gone to the library 3 times... and one of the times was a specific requirement for a class.
Posted by: Scott Szesterniak | March 25, 2007 10:41 PM