Saturday 6 October 2012

It's a book!

I am reading a book. OK, you say, so what else is new? You are not getting it, are you: I am reading a book. You don't scroll it down, You cannot blog with it. It cannot tweet. It cannot text. And so on. It's a book.

It's not like I am a totally digital person, but suddenly I find myself making ridiculous comparisons. The book is five hundred pages long, and even if it is a paperback, it's heavy and hard to hold. I have to break the spine to open it properly. The paper is yellowish and not friendly to my eyes. Worst of all: I cannot zoom to make the font larger. I find myself getting irritated because the book I am reading is not delivered through a medium I have got used to and find pleasurable.

I am not sure how to react to my own reaction. Does it mean that I will avoid printed books? To be frank, I am doing it already. If a book I want to read it not yet available in e-format, I wait. Am I missing something? The book I am reading is Swedish, therefore I could not get it on my tablet. But this is a matter of time. Will I ever buy another printed book? Well, there are still some kinds of books that work better in printed form, like picturebooks. But it's a matter of time.

Is the digital immigrant getting naturalised, and if so, what are the implications? The only consolation is that I am so old I'll be dead before it goes too far.

3 comments:

Robin said...

I read something recently that said one of the nice things about reading a story in a book instead of an e-reader is that the book is a private endeavor. E-books, on the other hand, can be tracked for different purposes and your reading habits can become part of a percentage. I don't know that that matters. Book sales have always been gathered one way or another. I guess if it's an interactive book, like so many of the picture book applications, it could be a bit creepy. Anyway, that was something I hadn't thought about.

Maria Nikolajeva said...

The first thing I did when I started usign a tablet was switch off "favourite quotes" when the thing showed passages that someone out there had highlighted. I don't know whether anyone out there can see my highlights. If they do - my pleasure.

Robin said...

I'd gladly read your highlights :)