the REAL differences between paper & screens

For my final blog post on this subject, I would like to discuss the REAL differences between paper and screens. What I mean by the “real” differences is a slightly more in-depth analysis from the mere statement that “one is physical, one is digital”.

In past blog posts, I have pondered over the reasons why E-book readers are the way they are, and what makes one more successful and appealing to consumers over the other. The result is always the same: the closer the resemblance to a physical book, the more comfortable the consumer is and therefore the more successful the digital reader is. So what makes physical paper a higher preference than digital E-books and all the conveniences that come with them?

An article I recently read entitled “Ebook - the Missing Link between Paper and Screen” by Birgit Lemken attempts to investigate the real differences and details of each literary medium. One key feature of print on paper, as also previously described in prior posts, is its ability to annotate notes and statements in margins. While more recent word processing software has made this a possibility for digital print, it is not frequently used and is considered a tedious task by many. However, the Lemken article augments this notion by pointing out that marginal notes are only apart of a broader scheme that links physical paper text to social relationships. Lemken reminds us that the final result of a digital word processed document is almost always a piece of paper that is printed out. The reason behind this is because “Paper documents have as well some social connotations. Exchanging print outs for review, collaborative modifying and personal delivery of documents can be used to foster social contacts and relations” (Lemken). This assessment illustrates one feature of paper as a shared, social medium which may be difficult for digital e-books to transcend.

Page turning is another surprisingly valuable feature to books and physical text. Studies cited by Lemken show us that there is something inherit within digital text restricts our attention spans as human beings. “We use paper to acquire, provide and modify information. Spatial location, time sequence, frequency of occurrence and word meaning are automatically encoded into memory [HZ79]. As automatic processes they only need minimal energy from our limited-capacity attentional mechanisms. This incidental memory can be effective as a mnemonic device [Roth71]. Lovelace and Southall showed that content recall was reduced by scrolled text presentation [LS83], the most frequent mode on computer screens” (Lemken). This assessment displays how page turning, over continuous scrolling, is preferable for our short term memory and is actually easier to read.

Another contribution to a weakened attention span in screen reading comes from the concept of hyperlinks. Hyperlinks allow readers to jump to a subtext subject within the primary body of work while in the middle of reading. This restricts our attention spans because it enables us to abandon the current reading project at any time and to simply “get lost in cyberspace” with no real direction or end. Hyperlinks can result in endless jumping and prohibit true chronological order that has proven to be essential in literary history.

e book piracy

Today I came across an interesting blurb in the new york times blogging section about electronic gadgets and the like. This blog post, published/posted on April 8th, describes how some Amazon Kindle users and customers are upset with the price of some of the E-books they offer. The article can be found HERE They are so upset, infact, that they have begun to publicly threaten Amazon with a potential wave of digital piracy.

Upset kindle users are beginning to voice a public outcry pertaining to digital ebooks being priced over $10. These users feel this price is extremely rash and unwarranted due to the comparison in price to an actual book. These users do not feel that it is fair for an ebook to be priced at $10 when the physical copy of the book may be priced at $15. The upset Amazon customers' complaints is that this is not a proper proportion of pricing considering the substantially less capabilities of a digital book in comparison to a hardbound, physical one.

The amazon users merely declare that if Amazon does not reconsider its pricing model, then they will dedicate themselves to the illegal replication and online distribution of these ebooks. Their plan is to do for digital books what MP3s did for digital music.

This proposes an interesting question. What is the actual numerical value/worth of possessing physical media over digital media? One of the primary arguments coming from the disgruntled Amazon customers is that a physical book can be shared, unlike the digital E-book. This really presents itsself as a justified argument to me. With a physical book, you pay a single price for it, but all friends and family of the purchasser will be able to read it as well, providing it has been loaned out to them. This implies that a single purchase is equal to an infinite number of reading experiences (of the same book of course). Is it really fair for a book to charge 2/3of the price even though its readership restriction goes from infinite to just one?