Today’s world is going through an uncountable number of changes, and sometimes it seems to be impossible to keep track of all of them. The political world map is periodically changing its boundaries during every century. Humanity is constantly adjusting its immune system by fighting new and unexplored viruses and diseases. Even the issue of marriage is undergoing some changes and no longer has one traditional form as it used to be before 2004, when the first gay marriage was legalized in the U.S. And even though global changes encompass the entire entity and play an important role in building a new, completely different world for the next generations, there are still things that remain constant and exist without dramatic changes.
Humanity classifies these things as classic ones: conventional music or classical ballet for one. Print books are also being in that paradigm, meaning that its content may be influenced by time, but its form always remains detached, and this point is well-defined by William H. Gass, Director of International Writers Center, Washington University, in the article “Will electronic books change the way we read?” by short and, at the same time, all-embracing phrase: “When I read a book, my attention moves and my eyes slide; here the words rise like the bubbled breath of someone drowning” (Jost).
The words “electronic books” in the title are showing another form of book, far from classical form but aggressively penetrating on market, and the author of the citation above is stressing out his opinion about that by further expression: ”The electric book is neither tool nor book; it is a Lilliputian valise for carrying about texts which have shrunk during their enfamishment on the Internet or in some cyberber file. It is a smallish box that will backlight a few lines for viewing as you scroll along, and therefore the box has been recommended for reading in bed, since the glow will not disturb and the cries of the captured words cannot be heard” (Jost).
127 our experts are availableright now
It is hard to imagine but there are billions of people who are of the same opinion as Mr. Gass about such a high value of reading print books compared to ebooks, and the reason why is that they have it coded in their genes. Year by year, century by century, humanity is using a piece of paper, whether it is in the form of a traditional book or ancient papyrus, to read from it. Hundreds of generations of people were holding books in their hands letting this habit enflesh in the atoms of their cells, and no ebook with all its features can change it or even get close to it. This is not even an existential “to be or not to be” issue.
This is today’s reality. Print books are not only surviving, but they are also getting stronger against the background of ebooks, letting people clearly see the difference in favor of them. For the last two decades, the global book market in general and publishers in particular are actively breeding the idea among the readers that ebooks is such a fancy way to read that ebooks deserve its place in the sun by imposing different advantages on them as its unexcelled convenience along with competitive price, perfect portability, and other features. At the same time, even though ebooks are actively trying to take over the tech-savvy reader’s minds, the majority of researchers do not give up and keep defending the idea of superiority printed books in, for instance, education.
Patricia A. Alexander, Professor of Psychology, University of Maryland, and Lauren M. Singer, Ph.D., Candidate in Educational Psychology, University of Maryland, in their article “The enduring power of print for learning in a digital world” for an academic expert’s website “The Conversation” state: “We found that students were able to better comprehend information in print for texts that were more than a page in length. This appears to be related to the disruptive effect that scrolling has on comprehension”. The author’s point is clear: human’s sensory nerves in fingers are carrying messages straight to the brain, which does not recognize scrolling a digital page and, as a result, the comprehension is suffering. Although, besides playing a huge role in education, reading physical books makes a big difference in human’s self-identification.
According to Meryl Halls, managing director of the Booksellers’ Association in the U.K.: “The book lover loves to have a record of what they’ve read, and it’s about signaling to the rest of the world. It’s about decorating your home, it’s about collecting, I guess, because people are completists aren’t they, they want to have that to indicate about themselves” (Handley). Mrs. Halls is highlighting a very thin but at the same time bright attribute of a human being, self-indication, when print books appear to be some sort of thread, connecting different spheres of human’s personal and social life.
Another important point of view regarding the historical and anthropological aspect of choosing print books is defined as so-called “chemistry in the air” in the following citation:” Books are made up of paper, adhesive, and ink. When these materials degrade over time, they give off organic volatile compounds, which in turn produce a smell that’s appealing to readers. The reason the smell is so appealing may be because it has a hint of vanilla. The scientific explanation for the vanilla-ish scent is that almost all wood-based paper contains lignin, which is closely related to vanillin” ( Chen ). Anatomically speaking, humanity inherited its organ of smell from the ancestors long time before the first book appeared.
Homosapien, Neanderthal, and their mammal predecessors did not have any clue about reading, but their sensory organs were already developed enough to distinguish a sweet taste of mother’s milk; therefore, a specific print book’s smell is also serving as some sort of retention for readers, unconsciously reminding them of their mammals roots. And this is why print books are playing such an important role in human’s life. And this is why print books are going to keep living among people now and in the future.
Nobody can exactly predict the consequences of the technical revolution which is going on right now. The nature of things includes desire for change. The current generation does not even know the way the first telephone worked a hundred years ago, when a person had to spin a side handle to be connected to the desired number. But this, the latest generation, generation Z, is still reading print books for education purposes and leisure, gifting them, collecting them, letting them stay an important part of human’s mode of life.
Works Cited
- Chen, Ginni . “3 Reasons Why book nerds love the smell of books”, Ask a literary lady, B&N Reads, May 6, 2015 www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/ask-a-literary-lady-why-do-people-smell-books/
- Jost, Kenneth . “Will electronic books change the way we read?”, CQ Researcher, June 23, 2000 www. library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2000062306&type=hitlist
- Lucy Handley. ”Physical books still outsell e-books — and here’s why”, CNBC, Sept. 19, 2019 www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/physical-books-still-outsell-e-books-and-heres-why.html
- Patricia A. Alexander and Lauren M. Singer. “The enduring power of print for learning in a digital world”, The Conversation , October 3, 2017 www.theconversation.com/the-enduring-power-of-print-for-learning-in-a-digital-world-84352
- https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/author/ginni-chen/
- https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/tag/ask-a-literary-lady-2/
- http://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/ask-a-literary-lady-why-do-people-smell-books/
- http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/static.php?page=authors#Kenneth%20Jost
- http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2000062306&type=hitlist
- https://theconversation.com/
- http://www.theconversation.com/the-enduring-power-of-print-for-learning-in-a-digital-world-84352
