David Ramirez­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

4/29/13

WRD 104 Section 312

Why argue? They’re both good

The debate of whether having a physical copy of a text and a digital duplicate has been a reoccurring issue in our generation. On one side, there are people who stick with the older way of obtaining information: by having a tangible source like a book, magazine, or a newspaper. On the other hand, there are other people who grew up with technology and have gotten so accustomed to it that they find no need for written texts. What I don’t get understand is how this preference issue has become an argument on whether people should pick one method and disregard the other method of obtaining information completely. Sure both of these versions of information may have their advantages and disadvantages, but I personally feel that it is up to the individual to choose how they get their information. It is not the topic that is discussed that is pointless but the fact that this discussion of whether we should abandon one form of information for another doesn’t matter. The only reason that I feel that this topic is debated at a bigger scale is because people are lead to believe that the answer to this question will revolutionize the way we obtain information. How people learn shouldn’t be decided by one group of people, and since both do have their sets of advantages that offer a lot to kids and the public in general, why not have both?

The arguments that print is better than digital reading partly resonate from the idea that there is no comparison to an experience from reading from a book. Personally I think that this argument is only valid due to the fact that we have been used to this form of obtaining information for a long time. A replacement to what has been part of human social interaction just seems counter-productive and not a fit way to attain information. In addition, reading from textbooks were how students obtained their information and for decades print was never challenged. To this day, I know people of my age group who prefer print over digital sources of information due to the fact that they obtain information for books better because that is what we have been used to since grade school. To some degree, I agree with this reasoning because we have been taught important skills from reading books and print like critical thinking and summarizing. This is why I think that keeping print is so important because we learn basic and advanced ways of processing information that will be useful for the rest for our lives. However, being used to something doesn’t dictate the overall effectiveness of a method. As long as the message from the text gets across, I think that technological ways of obtaining information are effective as well, but it all depends on the individual.

The availability of being able to read an article online has been a threat to many publishing companies all over the world. Since people have the option to download or simply pull up a digital print version of a book, there is no need to find a physical version. Being able to carry numerous amounts of books wherever you go without physically carrying all of them and being able to have them on a portable device is truly a great invention. The criticism of this invention comes into play however because of all of the other benefits that the device has. You can check stats and news about your favorite sports teams, play games, text message, and so on. With all of these applications, getting distracted from reading can happen quite frequently and takes away from the experience of reading (Red Chair Press). Yet, there are devices that are just dedicated to only reading like E-Books, where the chances of getting distracted can be reduced to a minimum. Along with that, we are currently living during a time where technological advancements are being made every day and where the demand for people who can interact and operate computers has gone up. Being able to read from technological sources is a major requirement in order to have success in these fields, yet there is no major push to move forward with these advancements. Reading from a text in fields like game design, computer science, or any career where a person needs to stand in front of a screen for long periods of time won’t be too useful if that is the only type of reading that is being done if there is no practice from reading digitally. Not learning how to obtain information from a technological source can therefore be limiting to the amount of information that we can learn. Moving forward in how we gain information is important and simply ditching one form of obtaining information won’t benefit us in any way because although some people may benefit from a cause, others may not.

Since I didn’t take a side on choosing whether print or digital is better, I felt that my opinion is part of a middle ground that is in fact very existent. We should not abandon reading from a text because of all of the important skills that we may learn from reading text. At the same time, learning how to use a computer and reading from a digital screen should be learned as well because of all of the future progress that we keep making in technology; being stuck in the past doesn’t seem logical in a progressive society. To answer the problem of which medium is better to spread information, the source should be allowed to decide which way he or she express themselves because spreading information may be more effective through digital than print or vice-versa (CPL). Debating on whether we should promote one or another shouldn’t be an issue, therefore we should focus more on what both forms of sharing information bring to the table and extract the benefits from different ways. So, why not have both?

Bibliography

Print vs Digital Debate Continues." Award-Winning Fiction and Nonfiction for Ages 3-10. N.p., 14 Jan. 2013. Web. 29 Apr. 2013.

"The 'lean-back' Concept Widens the Print vs Digital Debate | CPL." The 'lean-back' Concept Widens the Print vs Digital Debate | CPL. N.p., 06 Dec. 2011. Web. 29 Apr. 2013.