Final thoughts

Even though eBooks, eLibraries, the Kindle, the iPad and so on are so revolutionary, I'm still not sold. I've grown up; listening to LP's, reading my parents' old books, writing with a pen and paper... you can't ask me to give them up. Call me close-minded but I think we are losing some valuable by turning everything into digital format. Let's take eBooks for example, and I know it may seem like you heard this millions of times before but the truth is this is what great about books: the smell of them, the feel of them, the fact that you could pass them on to siblings, friends or family, the fact that they grow old with you, you can mark them, write on them, and such. Things like this you can do on a eBook but the palpability of books is just the best. That last characteristic is what I love most about hard copy books, I just have an emotional attachment to the fact that I can touch and feel my book. To give you a further example of this, I can't ever read anything of a certain length or something that I need to analyze on a screen; I have to have in my hands, to touch it, to be able to physically do something to it. To be perfectly honest nothing digital will ever reach the tangibility and quality of the traditional. Just so you know, I do love technology but to some extent and I do not think, I will not be a eBook owner anytime soon because I love Books too much but I've got to say the iPad is growing on me and I can see myself reading the New York Times or a magazine on it because it is way more convenient that having a bunch of them lying around at your house. Digital life is just what is going on right now and if anything it's going to keep getting digital so finding balance between technology and everything else is what people will need to do.

But. . . eBooks, eLibraries and digital lives aren't ALL that bad, right?

I've been bashing the digital, the technological and the Internet for a few posts now but it has more than enough advantages that are enormous and that is why we sometimes overlook its bad sides. The most obvious of the advantages is, of course, convenience. Being that everything today is digital, technological and done through the Internet, we are more efficient, fewer errors are likely to be made, tasks are made easier, etc. Technology has made some fields exceedingly better than they were before. Medicine is one of them. The latter has become so advanced that a doctor can diagnose someone from afar. CT scans help doctors find everything from kidney stones to unfamiliar masses like cancer and so much more. Due to this advancement in technology, a doctor can do way more to help a patient. Eighty to 100 years ago, a person could die from a simple cold and now these benign maladies can be treated just with an over-the-counter drug. Our digital lives aren't that bad if we are able to have more life expectancy! Moreover the world is smaller than ever. It is incredible how it is possible for me to be sitting in my room in Hempstead, New York talking to my parents through Skype about how my best friend in Nimes, France showed me her new apartment the other day. It's amazing how people are so close while being so far away from each other at the same time: another miracle of technology. EBooks and eLibraries are not that bad either, they have amazing storage space and they can't be easily destroyed or burned (Alexandria) as long as you have secure backups of course. These are just the basic advantages; imagine if we went into more depth about other benefits.

Digital lives and their consequences

Ah... how amazing is it that I can sit here in my dorm room and write something that could potentially be read by people from around the globe: the beauty of the Internet and digitalization! Despite their enormous advantages, the Internet and digitalization have various shortcomings. To me, the problem is that not EVERYTHING needs to be digital and it seems likely that’s where we are heading, i.e. eBooks, eLibraries, etc. Some things can be left out of being digitalized. I think that we are becoming so impersonal because everything we do, from socializing to paying our bills, is through these digital devices. If we are not careful, they will take over our lives and we will be governed by technology. I will not be surprised if 50, 60 years from now, our lives look like the lives of the characters of A.I. or The Terminator; maybe not exactly like in the movies, as they are exaggerations, but somewhat similar.

This digital world is turning us into too much of individualists. We are more and more absorbed by our own little worlds which are limited by our TV, computer, eBooks, Blackberries or iPhones, Facebook profiles, etc. Like I said in my last post, we neglect the real people that are around us for the virtual ones that we meet online and as result we become lonely without ever being alone. Furthermore, we are missing out on the small things in life. Our heads are always turned towards a screen. Ironically enough, I'm blogging about this on the Internet and my head is turned towards a screen: but this only shows the ambivalence of this phenomenon. The real solution: balance.