Essay on Electronic Writing Will Not Make Books Obsolete

Birkerts provides three effects that will occur as a result of moving away from the printed word to the electronic media. The first effect is the language erosion. He explains the reader that transition from books will lead to the “complexity and distinctiveness of verbal and written communication, which are deeply bound to transaction of print literacy, will gradually be replaced by a more telegraphic sort of plainspeak” (9). In the future our language will start to become more simple and dumb. Whereas, by reading books and printed materials people are able to dig more depth and understand and imagine the contents. But, soon this will start to disappear as people will no longer be able to understand the complex language of the literature and intelligence level of people will start to decrease. The second effect of electronic media is the flattening of historical perspectives. This means that due to the electronic media the history will start to recede because the “printed page itself is a link” and when this link is broken the past will gradually diminish (10). Birkerts explains the audience that the past is best represented in the books and libraries. Therefore, moving away from the printed word means moving away from the past and its history. The last effect is the waning of the private self. Birkerts worries that in the future people will forget how to live because of the electronic

In this society that is gradually becoming increasingly dependent on technology, will literature slowly disappear from the minds of the population? This is the question that Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, attempts to answer. In this book, he describes a hypothetical world in which the population not only avoids reading, but has made owning books an unthinkable crime, with all books discovered burned, along with the houses of those who hoarded them. In this dystopian future created by Bradbury, the beauty that is literature has been replaced in society by television programs and radio stations. This reveals Bradbury’s obvious fear that modern technology would completely replace books- a legitimate concern to have. In 2015, the value of books differ between groups of people. The disadvantage of this is that books provide the readers opportunity to allow their imaginations to run wild, something that television and radio never could. Fahrenheit 451 addresses the problem and fear of overwhelming technology through its fictional world, which shows what would happen should people render literature completely useless through the use of television and radios.

The written communication form has changed and developed over a long stretch of time. Man has always been in the business of changing things no matter how good it might be working just to see if they can make it better not only for themselves but for the whole world. In an essay by Christine Rosen titled “In the Beginning Was the Word”, she states “The book, like the wheel , is merely a technology, these enthusiasts argue, and thus we should welcome improvements to it, even if those improvements eventually lead to the book’s obsolescence (205). Like the wheel the book is open to changes until the end of time. There is no limit on how many times or how many ways that it can be changed because with man’s imagination there is no restriction on what he can do with anything in this

Bradbury wrote a novel, Fahrenheit 451, predicting the modern society to this day. While having the protagonist, Guy Montag, go by with his life, Bradbury draws a great picture on how the technology and their society can very much relate the modern day. Guy Montag’s job, a fireman, requires burning books since their government does not allow the people to read, have new thoughts or even their own time to themselves. Doing so, the people of the

As time goes on our technology is advancing and slowly starting to control how humans are acting and taking over jobs, human interactions, and how people use their time. In the novel readers see how Bradbury uses technology to show how it takes over people and how they think or feel about themselves and others. Ebooks, social media networks, automatic cleaning tools, and robots are just a few items that have been created to make life a lot simpler and less work for humans. Today in society people choose not to use critical thinking but instead are using technology to replace what they're supposed to do for themselves. People are using technology to replace books and everything else they're doing.

When it’s thought about only a few years ago people used to lie down in their bedrooms and read novels that would lie on their bedside table. In the book Fahrenheit 451 books are not read anymore, in fact books are illegal they rely heavily on technology use. This relates to today because soon society will stop publishing books altogether. People now have technology that puts books on screens rather them being read on paper. The updated technology now changes the society from the traditional aspects of it. Although technology helps society in many ways, it is hurting us, in this book Bradbury’s main character in fictional proof of how society will be in the future.

In the modern day society, books are frowned upon; however, interactive media such as television and seashell radios are highly encouraged. In Fahrenheit 451, Professor Faber fears the aftermath of the world without literature and is portrayed as too cowardly to take action, a “Queen bee, safe in the hive” (87). Through Faber’s lecture to Montag, Ray Bradbury aggrandizes his pessimistic view on society by using characterization, diction, and the selection of detail to present the idea that society relies upon pleasure and happiness so much that literature and common knowledge are rapidly disappearing.

Most people would rather look on the internet instead of read a book. This is similar in the book because they rely on technology more than books. Many of today’s technologies were predicted by Ray Bradbury. For example, Montag owns a television that takes up three walls. people do have these, and even average people sometimes have very large TV’s. Some other examples are voice activated commands, all types of communication devices, and earbuds or as he called them, “seashells”.

The author of the novel Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, tries to explain that technology is going to end up taking over books. Through Fahrenheit 451, Ray does an excellent job by showing the reader about how technology can take over people’s minds. This novel helps explain that the people became dependent on their technologies that they no longer found interest in books, and that it made them feel an emotion other than happiness. Reading this book, I noticed that multiple times, the author tried to show how technology took over. People in this society had no knowledge or common sense because of their dependance on technology.

Bogar,Adam T. and Szigethy,Rebeka Sara.”Bradbury,Technology,and the Future of Reading.”Critical Insight:Fahrenheit 451. Ed.Rafeeq O. McGiveron. Hackensack: Salem,2013. N. pag. Salem online.Web. 25 Apr. 2017.

While both includes reading one deals the web and the other with an actual book. The author fears that if "generations [continues] growing up online" they will lack the ability to understand "novels,poems,and other kinds of literature". The ones brain that was "trained to apprehend them" will be the only ones to

This was a very intriguing read, that really made me realize how much we rely on technology today. The author, Nicholas Carr discusses how we use to live in a society where we read books instead of going to the search bar and quickly finding out what you want to know.

Technology is a helpful tool for teaching the writing process, and Marchisan and Alber (2001) concluded that writers can be taught to write using the writing process approach paired with tools of technology, direct instruction, and committed well-trained teachers. Graham, (2008), Graham & and Perin (2007a), and Rogers & and Graham, (2008), agreed that technology makes the process of writing easier and often provides very specific types of support. Word processing provides at least four advantages: (a) revisions are easily made, (b) publishing is professional-looking, (c) typing provides an easier means for children with fine motor skill challenges to produce text, and (d) word-processing programs have software programs, such as spell and stylistic checkers designed to reduce specific types of miscues. Other tools are speech synthesis (i.e., the writer’s spoken words are transcribed to electronic text) and word-prediction programs (i.e., the computer program reduces the key strokes by predicting the writer’s next word). This is helpful for students with difficulties with spelling and the mechanics of writing. In addition, outlining and semantic mapping software can aide with the planning process, and the use of computer networks and the Internet can help to promote communication and collaboration among writers.

During the development of technology, most people have shifted to use electronic books to read both academic and non-academic texts. However, despite the technological changes, there has been a wide debate about the benefits of paper books over the e-books. It is important to understand that various reasons are suggesting why people should shift back to using the traditional books rather than the electronic ones. Even though some think that e-books are better that traditional ones, I believe that readers should return to traditional books because of various reasons.

How has writing and the way we read changed in the last fifty years? Technology, reading, and writing has changed greatly over the last five decades, but how much has it affected our culture? Technology has become our culture, we are cyber culture. We need everything as fast as we can get it, somehow we’ve lost the time through the years to read and write as we once did.