My girlfriend was about to enroll her six-year-old daughter in a summer reading program with Barnes & Noble until she realized that by doing so she was entering to win a Kindle (well, probably a Nook). For her kid. Then she stopped.
Which reminded me that I needed to write about how much I loathe the electronic book craze that’s happening. I realize that by doing so I sound like an old-fashioned old lady, Luddite-lite (I AM blogging, so I can’t be All Luddite, right?). But I don’t care.
You may argue that, just as culture transitioned from an oral tradition to the written word, and then from books to visual media, Progress take various and shifting forms of communication and story-telling – and one isn’t better than the other, but the quicker, the more portable, the less cumbersome, the better.
Of course, using that logic, we should return to the oral tradition, which was extremely portable and definitely not subject to fires or electronic rights hang-ups.
But I digress. I don’t agree that every change is either
a) unavoidable or
b) an improvement.
Cultural shifts occur through human choice, and we can be mindful about which paths we take, which options to exploit.
As for ‘progress’ or ‘improvements,’ inventions, new technologies – these often have both positive and negative effects, some we don’t see for decades or more. But whatever the effects, I think we can look even closer at the experience, and weigh the costs and benefits.
The Options of Experience vs. Convenience
For instance, there’s the issue of pregnancy in hospitals. Many people advocate for home births, for a better experience. I personally care less about the experience than I do about safety. So, I’m fine with medicalized birth.
Guns, on the other hand, are great for protecting against snakes, but I don’t think anyone should experience the power of killing another person with a gun. I think it does something to our brains. It’s not just the power, but the lack of effort required to shoot a gun; it’s too easy to point and shoot. Point and click. Touch and go. When certain activities become too easy, we treat them too casually, and shrug off the consequences, because we literally, physically, do not feel or experience any. We’re into convenience, at the expense of experience.
How we choose to structure and frame our experience – whether it’s education, entertainment, socializing, transportation, whatever – changes the context and tenor of the experience itself.
- Shopping on Amazon vs. visiting a store
- Having a conversation in person vs. on Facebook
- Going to live theater vs. watching a movie
Virtual reality is not “bad” – but it does insert an interface between the person’s physical body and senses and the physical reality of the world. Stripping out the information our bodies get from our physical senses lessens the amount of information we’re getting; depletes reality a little; and leaves those senses, our sense of our physical selves, our sense of our bodies, to wither from lack of use.
Five Reasons to Stick with Real Books
And that’s reason number one for me thinking e-books are harmful, especially for kids:
1) It will train a child’s consciousness to understand the self as divided and separate from the body and the world. The lack of the anchor of a physical book separates your mental experience from your physical experience; reinforces the false notion of a division existing between mind and body, a cultural understanding that allows us to divide reality and subjugate parts of it.
2) It will affect the growing brain. We know too much about the brain now NOT to bet that interacting with an electronic reader will have a different effect on your neural networks than reading traditional books will, especially when the brain is young and growing.
3) It will hurt your eyes – there’s a reason heavy computer users are encouraged to take a break from staring at the lit screen. Eye strain, headaches can result from prolonged exposure. Not so with the printed word.
4) The experience is less pleasurable – and reading should be pleasing! I argue this based upon my own subjectivity mostly – but also just in terms of the physical, sensory engagement of each – with a regular book, you feel its weight, touch its texture, smell the pages – you write in the margins, you dogear pages, you can flip back and forth…
5) It will instill a value of convenience over experience: it doesn’t matter if it’s enjoyable or not, moral or not, painful or not; if it’s fast and easy, it’s the better option. FYI: it is not.
Ever since Derrida and the other post-structuralists solidified the Cartesian dualism that has ruled Western culture, I feel like we’ve given up on real life. OH well, we’re saying; we’re hitched to Progress, and it’s killing the planet and giving us stress and cancer, we’re stuck in ruts of war and competition and hierarchy, jobs we hate and economies built on cheap goods and suffering and There’s Nothing We Can Do About it.
I agree that we’re not going to fight the power and take it all down.
But I don’t agree there’s nothing we can do about it.
By firmly choosing values of experience over convenience, especially for our children, we can grow and retain conceptions of reality and self that will allow us to make choices that remove us from the drowning yoke of Progress.
Thoughts?
Kindle for Kids: Now, for sure, the End is Nigh June 22, 2011
Tags: children and media, ebooks, kids and books, kindle, media for children, nook, virtual reality
My girlfriend was about to enroll her six-year-old daughter in a summer reading program with Barnes & Noble until she realized that by doing so she was entering to win a Kindle (well, probably a Nook). For her kid. Then she stopped.
Which reminded me that I needed to write about how much I loathe the electronic book craze that’s happening. I realize that by doing so I sound like an old-fashioned old lady, Luddite-lite (I AM blogging, so I can’t be All Luddite, right?). But I don’t care.
You may argue that, just as culture transitioned from an oral tradition to the written word, and then from books to visual media, Progress take various and shifting forms of communication and story-telling – and one isn’t better than the other, but the quicker, the more portable, the less cumbersome, the better.
Of course, using that logic, we should return to the oral tradition, which was extremely portable and definitely not subject to fires or electronic rights hang-ups.
But I digress. I don’t agree that every change is either
Cultural shifts occur through human choice, and we can be mindful about which paths we take, which options to exploit.
As for ‘progress’ or ‘improvements,’ inventions, new technologies – these often have both positive and negative effects, some we don’t see for decades or more. But whatever the effects, I think we can look even closer at the experience, and weigh the costs and benefits.
The Options of Experience vs. Convenience
For instance, there’s the issue of pregnancy in hospitals. Many people advocate for home births, for a better experience. I personally care less about the experience than I do about safety. So, I’m fine with medicalized birth.
Guns, on the other hand, are great for protecting against snakes, but I don’t think anyone should experience the power of killing another person with a gun. I think it does something to our brains. It’s not just the power, but the lack of effort required to shoot a gun; it’s too easy to point and shoot. Point and click. Touch and go. When certain activities become too easy, we treat them too casually, and shrug off the consequences, because we literally, physically, do not feel or experience any. We’re into convenience, at the expense of experience.
How we choose to structure and frame our experience – whether it’s education, entertainment, socializing, transportation, whatever – changes the context and tenor of the experience itself.
Virtual reality is not “bad” – but it does insert an interface between the person’s physical body and senses and the physical reality of the world. Stripping out the information our bodies get from our physical senses lessens the amount of information we’re getting; depletes reality a little; and leaves those senses, our sense of our physical selves, our sense of our bodies, to wither from lack of use.
Five Reasons to Stick with Real Books
And that’s reason number one for me thinking e-books are harmful, especially for kids:
1) It will train a child’s consciousness to understand the self as divided and separate from the body and the world. The lack of the anchor of a physical book separates your mental experience from your physical experience; reinforces the false notion of a division existing between mind and body, a cultural understanding that allows us to divide reality and subjugate parts of it.
2) It will affect the growing brain. We know too much about the brain now NOT to bet that interacting with an electronic reader will have a different effect on your neural networks than reading traditional books will, especially when the brain is young and growing.
3) It will hurt your eyes – there’s a reason heavy computer users are encouraged to take a break from staring at the lit screen. Eye strain, headaches can result from prolonged exposure. Not so with the printed word.
4) The experience is less pleasurable – and reading should be pleasing! I argue this based upon my own subjectivity mostly – but also just in terms of the physical, sensory engagement of each – with a regular book, you feel its weight, touch its texture, smell the pages – you write in the margins, you dogear pages, you can flip back and forth…
5) It will instill a value of convenience over experience: it doesn’t matter if it’s enjoyable or not, moral or not, painful or not; if it’s fast and easy, it’s the better option. FYI: it is not.
Ever since Derrida and the other post-structuralists solidified the Cartesian dualism that has ruled Western culture, I feel like we’ve given up on real life. OH well, we’re saying; we’re hitched to Progress, and it’s killing the planet and giving us stress and cancer, we’re stuck in ruts of war and competition and hierarchy, jobs we hate and economies built on cheap goods and suffering and There’s Nothing We Can Do About it.
I agree that we’re not going to fight the power and take it all down.
But I don’t agree there’s nothing we can do about it.
By firmly choosing values of experience over convenience, especially for our children, we can grow and retain conceptions of reality and self that will allow us to make choices that remove us from the drowning yoke of Progress.
Thoughts?