When was the last time you saw someone read a book on the bus into campus? It’s probably not an impossible memory to recover but one that is slowly being overlaid by those consisting of people wearing headphones plugged into their iPhones, laptops, or reading on their Kindles. Here is the lowdown on the top physical copies and their modern counterparts, which are slowly and surely becoming their equivalents…
“There is nothing quite like having a dog-eared book filled with pages and pages just asking to be written all over”
Being an English Undergraduate, perhaps my opinion is kind of biased on this one, but I really cannot see myself converting to a Kindle over an old book. There is nothing quite like having a dog-eared book filled with pages and pages just asking to be written all over. Whether it is underlining, highlighting, or scribbling your thoughts all over the margins, you can do what you want with a physical book.
The Kindle is undoubtedly more convenient in terms of weight, with people being able to carry thousands of books inside this one tiny device, rather than hauling dozens of heavy books to and from the library. However, the novelty of the book is not lost on everyone, with Kindle sales slowly falling whilst book sales rise, meaning in this case: physical copies win.
As for the laptop, one of the biggest questions for new University students is whether to type lecture notes onto their laptop or write them by hand into a lined notebook or piece of paper. Take one look around any lecture theatre and you will see that laptops win in this case.
How can you argue with the fact that you can type faster than you write? Well, you can.
Mueller and Oppenheimer completed a study which found that students who made handwritten notes demonstrate increased academic performance and process the information more than those who type notes onto a laptop.
Again, there is the freedom to write wherever you please as there is with a novel, plus, you are safe from being distracted by the Internet if you stick with this physical copy.
“You are safe from being distracted by the Internet if you stick with this physical copy”
Meanwhile, Vinyls are cherished and bought expensively as novelty items, but we are yet to comprehend whether this will be the fate of our currently disowned CDs.
In April 2018 it was announced that CD sales were overtaken by online streaming and perhaps, like me, you were shocked that this had not happened earlier. This is the one physical copy I feel cannot be argued for; the more easily accessible mobile phone and laptop can supply us with every song you could want, whilst CDs confine us to CD players, or Discman’s (if you can remember what they are)…
“Technology is beginning to dominate the way we do everything today”
Ultimately, the gradual disappearance of physical copies and rise of technological counterparts is disheartening. It reflects the way social relations are slowly being replaced by online interaction and the general way technology is beginning to dominate the way we do everything today. Whilst I cannot argue for the CD, which is not as portable as our phones are, the fate of notebooks and novels should be protected. Not only should we be have the freedom to scribble and doodle as we please, but the freedom from constantly being constricted to technological devices and the internet; which is a whole new ball-game itself.
Charlotte Hegley
Featured image and article image courtesy of Georgia Butcher.
Image use licence here.
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