INTRODUCTION
We live in a digital era today. We have come to the point when our lives would be unimaginable without internet. We are relying on it so much these days that our dependence sometimes borders addiction. However, internet is slowly merging itself into our lives. It has come to affect every aspect of modern living. Therefore, of all the things internet is influencing today, what impact does it have on modern literature? Moreover, did internet kill literature?
With internet, a feeling of availability prevails. And to a certain extent, it is true – some fifteen years ago, it would have been impossible to write a book today and publish it tomorrow. Or to desire to read a bestseller and have it on your Kindle immediately. Furthermore, digital era brought about many changes in the publishing industry and the largest of them being the phenomenon of self-publishing.
LOOKING BACK…
Looking backwards at the beginnings of the publishing industry, we can see that it was the novel which started it all. Therefore it was the novel that created mass-markets. For example, Daniel Defoe with his Robinson Crusoe, considered to be the first English novel, was a middle-class writer. He cared little about the tradition and antiquity, hence what he did was considered novelty at the time – he popularized ordinary man. From that moment onwards, the novel spreads and evolves into numerous sub-genres and is today the most prominent form of writing.
In addition, another example from history,
A huge beneficial effect of the Internet is time-efficiency because it no longer takes days to find research. Fortunately, it only takes a couple of minutes to do a few Google searches. Another benefit to the Internet, in comparison to the last example, is that it is a channel for most of the world’s information. For Carr, as for others, the Internet is becoming a universal medium. Lastly, it is probable that we may be doing more reading today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was a choice of interest. It is assumed that we may do more reading today because not only do we have access to a variety of texts, but also a numerous amount of ways of communicating. For example, social media accounts and text-messaging. A negative effect of the Internet is that it is chipping away capacity for contemplation. The Internet is
The internet makes people to be more dependency. It makes people to observe more information, and to be tended to find information. People relay more in finding information in the internet today. Furthermore, people are physically involved as they try to think and find information from the internet. The internet may have small effect on people, but still it helps people.
I believe that the Internet is changing how we as a society think and comprehend information because I have experienced this in my personal life. “My mind isn’t going--so far as I can tell-- but it’s changing” (Carr par. 2). Carr recognizes that his mind is changing and I recognize that as well because of such heavy Internet and technology use. When I was younger, I used to be a fairly avid reader. Then I was introduced to the Internet and became more dependent on it for schoolwork, projects and really just for everyday life. My affinity for reading is pretty much gone do to my dependence on the Internet. A lot of my friends experienced this too. “When I mention my troubles with reading to friends, many say they’re suffering from similar afflictions” (Carr par. 6). A great majority of my friends would agree with this quote as much as I do. My friend circle have given up reading because of their major dependence on the Internet. It also does not help that my generation was born into this world of overwhelming technology. We have grown up with the world at our fingertips, and reading books has become a secondary way to obtain information. It is even an annoyance to read sometimes because books are cumbersome and heavy. While the Internet is handy for many things, it appears to be altering our minds even if we are oblivious to it. It changes how information is presented and processed by our brains. The Internet is a great tool for finding information, but its distractions and sheer overwhelming volume of websites creates shortened attention spans and lack of
The author of this article Mrs. Denise Davis is the director of the Office for Research and Statistics of the American Library Association. This means that Mrs. Davis is able to access and is responsible for the reports mandatory for each library across America to turn in each fiscal year, these reports are used to determine what changes the libraries need to make to better serve the public. Given her credibility to write on such topics she then chooses a topic each year to write on to prepare libraries and librarians across the country for the upcoming years. In 2010 Mrs. Davis choose to write on eBooks and their increasing popularity throughout the American population as well as the difficulties libraries have encountered in the past fiscal year to compete with eBooks. Because this article is written in 2010 it shows just how long libraries have struggled with the topic of eBooks and can demonstrate the new policies that have been used by the libraries throughout the past four years. This information can help my research in showing how eBooks have affected the library's behavior, and consequently give me the statistics needed to show the effects of eBooks on the libraries throughout the recent years. Understanding this source is outdated other sources will also likely be used in my final project from the American Library Association websites of statistics of more recent years.
Things that used to be printed out on paper such as newspapers and articles can all be found digitally. There is not hope for the things of the past like that. It is only a matter of time before there won’t be any paper books. They will all be digital. A much acclaimed critic writes, “One has only to look at
At one time, it is true, e-book publishing barley made its niche. This was particularly so in Europe. But Amazon Kindle and similar tools have made it more acceptable and popular and studies such s those by PWC (nd) predict incremental but sure growth of the digital book publishing future.
In this source it states “Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. . .That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.” This means that overtime with the internet being available people have lost interest in reading an actual book. “I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes.” This evidence helps the suggestion mentioned previously that people prefer the Internet now more due to acquiring information much easier and
In today’s day and age, it is common knowledge that students possess different learning styles than those of generations before them. In the essays by Marc Prensky “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants” (2001) and “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Part II: Do They Really Think Differently?” (2001) the author clearly argues a need to adapt to students modern learning styles. In Lotta Larson’s “The Learning Potential of e-Books” (2015) Larson also argues the clear benefits of eLearning for today’s students. Finally, is Naomi S. Baron’s “How E-Reading Threatens Learning is the Humanities” (2014) a different approach is noted as eLearning could be argued as distracting to a student’s learning process. It is no question that pupils today can
Taking into account these various factors, the novel as a genre, simultaneously grew and developed in what has become the primary genre of contemporary books. These social, economic and political changes, treated separately were not enough to induce, the development of the novel. Rather it was the presence of circumstances and factors together that inundated the transition of the novel, illuminating its purpose as a social tool as well as a recreational
Electronic publications have not only increased access to text, they have even created new ways to view and interpret literature, not to mention new ways to write it (Landow 223). Some would argue that electronic publications leave little room for the ‘true author’—the Hemingway’s and Thoreau’s that write in secluded cabins, scratching novels on loose paper—but I disagree. Internet authors, while more common that those published in book form, may be in fact be held to a higher standard. The true author is not leaving the picture, as some fear, but is now expected to continuously paint it. "Authors are evolving into constant suppliers of new content; they are reporters and advisors as much as they are writers (Pang 349).
This e-book provides not only educators but administrators and policymakers who influence all levels of higher education with deeper understanding of how the varied experienced of histories of Asian American students escape an easy categorization. The monograph is divided in five chapters, each dealing with an important element necessary to understanding Asian Americans in higher education. The first chapter offers a historical review of the concept of model minorities and how that relates to the experiences of Asian Americans. The second chapter discusses how Asian Americans have achieved various educational milestones. The third and fourth look at the administration policies in relationship to Asian Americans, and the research of the college
The author noted the negative effect of the internet as it making us become lazy, weakness, and less concentrated in reading book or multiple pages. Marshall McLuhan, a media theorist and Scott Karp and Bruce Friedman whose are the online
The Internet Affects Pop Culture The internet has had an impact on pop culture, through social media we discover new products which would be harder without the internet. In today society artists, writers are able to show product of their work easier than in the past. It becomes easier to get a contract deal than before. The internet provides ways to build a larger community, and provide easier access to the contents shared by the users.
The two writing pieces compared are “The Future of eBooks? Will print disappear? An end-perspective”, by Wouter van der Velde and Olaf Ernst and “You DO Like Reading off a Computer Screen” by Cory Doctorow. The academic article by Velde and Ernst was published by a British company in late 2009. The non-scholarly essay by Doctorow was published by an American company in 2007. When comparing both the academic article and the essay, there were many different approaches on the same topic. When reading the title of the academic article, it appeared to be asking questions as well as foreshadowing the answers. The title of the non-scholarly essay was much more relatable to the context of the essay compared to the academic article. The two reading
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.