Back in 2400 B.C, all we had were papyrus scrolls. However, once the Egyptians introduced these scrolls to the Greeks, documentation boomed. Rome developed libraries, woodblock printing is invented in China, and the modern book was born in the 1st Century A.D. (Book History Timeline). For centuries, books become the primary source of historical documentation, story documentation, and the storage unit of all information that cannot be stored in our minds. However, in 2007, the electronic commerce company, Amazon.com, released the Amazon Kindle. The Amazon Kindle’s purpose was to make reading easier. It provided more novels without the hassle of packing the physical books themselves, and the ‘e-ink’ used made reading less strenuous to the eyes than reading off a computer screen. Since then, Amazon.com has produced over 10 new versions of the Amazon Kindle, including the Kindle Fire and Kindle Voyager (Popular Science.com). At the time, the Amazon Kindle was the future of reading. Books were going to become extinct, just like the papyrus scrolls before them. However, books have brought more to humanity than the e-books ever will. The e-books were just an improvement upon books. Books are better than e-books because they have assisted us for thousands of years, and they continue to help us today.
Your brain sees words as objects rather than abstract thoughts. For example, your brain sees words like you see a glass of orange juice. The glass, the color of the juice, and the shape of the juice tells your brain that it is a glass of orange juice. When you see the letter ‘A,’ you observe that the letter is made up of three lines, and you recognize that assortment of lines as the letter ‘A.’ So when you are reading, you are writing these words and letters out in your mind, registering each letter as its physical self. This characteristic allows your mind to create a mental map of the passage, helping it remember where the important information is. With e-books, the reader can change the font and size of the text, making it more distracting for your brain to gather information. With e-books, it also changes the pattern on the screen when the reader slides to a new page, so if they were to slide back, the position of the words would be different, making it harder to find information (Ferris Jabr). Not only do paper books make it easier to process words and information, but they help retain information as well. Back in 2015 a study was performed with two groups of undergraduates. These students were asked to read five different texts; one group read off of paper, the other read on an e-book. After they read one text, they were required to take an assessment based on the text. However, each text was read under a certain scenario. Two of the texts were read in a seven-minute time period. Two texts would be read with no restriction on time. The final text would be read with no time restriction; however, they would be interrupted after seven minutes. The results showed that across the board, no matter which assessment was taken, the paperback readers did better than the e-readers by at least five percent (Caroline Myrberg). “Touching paper and turning pages aids the memory, making it easier to remember where you read something. Having to scroll on the computer screen makes remembering more difficult,” Caroline Myrberg explains in her article, “Screen vs. paper: what is the difference for reading and learning?” However, there are still benefits of the e-book that can be applied to both the youth and the elderly of our day. Kindles such as the Kindle Fire accommodate for the youth by being similar to the electronic devices they use in their everyday lives. It not only provides them with a universal access to books, but also to apps and the internet. With others, e-books make reading easier, not only with the elderly, but with the visually impaired as well. Since they are able to change the font, size, and color of the text, they can adjust the text so the words are visible and their brains can comprehend words easier. The elderly can change the background color and screen brightness as well, making the letters clearer to their eyes (Caroline Myrberg). The opportunity to adjust these settings also helps people who are visually impaired or suffer from dyslexia. Changing the font size helps them focus on each word better than if it were in a real book, which doesn’t have such settings. They would just have to buy a book with a bigger font right off the back (Amy Kraft). These were the original purposes of the e-book, of course. E-books are easy to purchase, they’re available in a second, and they don’t use paper, which saves us trees (SuccessConsciousness.com). Though these perks are useful to many, there is one major factor that makes paper books better than the rest. Paper books are healthier than e-books. Staring at a screen isn’t healthy for the human body in the first place. Monitors, computer screens, tablets, and even a variety of e-books have screens that constantly change brightness in order to bring out color and three-dimensional shapes. However, this constant change of brightness hurts your eyes, causing itchiness and burning (HealthGuidance.org). People who constantly use these devices for reading also develop conditions such as ‘iPad Neck’ and ‘Computer Vision Syndrome’ (Caroline Myrberg). Putting this strain on the eyes also causes sleep problems, which lead to brain issues (Amy Kraft). There are many benefits to using an e-reader, but to quote psychologist Jim Taylor, “Technology is beautiful, but it is still a box,” (Scholastic.com). This will be a battle for ages to come. Should mankind advance in technology and throw out paper books forever, or should they reminisce in the relaxation that comes with picking up a book, opening the cover, and diving into a technology-free hour of adventure? Humanity can easily take to the future and burn all of the world’s books, just like in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, but there will always be book lovers who appreciate everything the book has done for us. Many will side with the quickly-accessible, new age e-books, but others with defend the classic, page turning novels that humanity has grown up with (Scholastic.com). When considering which side is superior, take into account that paper books help the reader with cognitive skills, test taking skills, and staying healthy by driving them away from the constant attention given to electronic devices. Works Cited "The Benefits and Advantages of eBooks." SuccessConsciousness.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 May 2017. <http://www.successconsciousness.com/ebooks_benefits.htm>. Book History Timeline. ENG 5933 fsu.Edu, 2007, english8.fsu.edu/Courses/ENG4834_S11/Book_History_Timeline.pdf. Accessed 22 May 2017. Bradbury, Ray. 451° Fahrenheit. Bucharest: Editura Tineretului, 1953. Print. "E-Books vs. Print: What Parents Need to Know." Scholastic.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 May 2017. <http://www.scholastic.com/parents/resources/article/developing-reading-skills/e-books-vs-print-what- parents-need-to-know>. "Kindle Screens and Your Eyes." HealthGuidance.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 May 2017. <http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/15903/1/Kindle-Screens-and-Your-Eyes.html>. Kraft, Amy. "Books vs. e-books: The science behind the best way to read." CBS News. CBS Interactive, 14 Dec. 2015. Web. 18 May 2017. <http://www.cbsnews.com/news/kindle-nook-e-reader- books-the-best-way-to-read/>. Jabr, Ferris. "The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens." Scientific American. N.p., 09 Apr. 2013. Web. 18 May 2017. <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/>. Myrberg, Caroline, and Ninna Wiberg. "Screen vs. paper: what is the difference for reading and learning?" Insights. UKSG in association with Ubiquity Press, 07 July 2015. Web. 18 May 2017. <http://insights.uksg.org/articles/10.1629/uksg.236/>. "News Releases." Smithsonian Experts Find E-readers Can Make Reading Easier for Those with Dyslexia | Newsdesk. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 May 2017. <http://newsdesk.si.edu/releases/smithsonian-experts-find-e-readers-can-make-reading-easier-those-dyslexia>. "See How Amazon's Kindle Evolved Over Time." Popular Science. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 May 2017. <http://www.popsci.com/evolution-kindle>.
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