E-Reading or E-Degrading?

According to various analytical websites and editorial teams, one of the most powerful trends of this year of 2011 is e-reading.

The world’s schools are implementing tablets instead of student books and notebooks, ensuring compactness and full access to all the necessary educational information. Recording audiobooks has become an entire new industry where unrecognized actors are able to fulfill their potential and contribute to the digitalization of the human heritage.

E-reading is said to be convenient and comprehensive. It only requires a smart device powered with pretty much any operating system. Glowing displays do not depend on lighting, are fun to handle when being touchscreen. Handheld gadgets can contain thousands of books to read and a bit less of books to listen to.

E-reading devices have separated into a group that does not require powerful processors. They are designed especially to imitate human handwriting for sophisticated readers, evolve to colored “pages” and include animation for children.

The sad thing is that nobody can actually give a decent argumentation in favor of e-books as oppose to paper- and hardbacks. Convenience is questionable because gadgets actually cost money. They will never outnumber or override paper books, for those are the cheapest means of information storage ever.

Utilization of e-books in darkness is actually dangerous, for it causes glaucoma. It is strongly recommended to read with bright top light, so there is no actual point in using glowing e-books in the dark. Both paper and e-books need to be lighted with external light sources.

Imitation of human handwriting seems pretty ridiculous. It is not comprehensible when it comes to real handwriting, while the aesthetic aspect loses value due to the machine origin.

Making e-books animated is a weird attempt to produce cartoon-book hybrids and has very doubtful benefits from the pedagogical viewpoint. It distracts children, to be honest, and shifts the cognitive function with the entertaining one.

Nobody cares about the impact touch-screen displays have on people’s eyes. Nobody thinks about typing that kills writing by hand. Recent research has shown that all the brain zones that are associated with motoric development are underdeveloped among children who type most of the time when learning things.

Mobile development weakens the motoric functions of people when it comes to information input and is now seriously impacting reading skills and habits. It’s a wonder high technologies are blinding even the most conservative people.