The Way We Read
Today I was thinking how technology changed what we read and how we read. I always loved reading and in any place I lived I always owned a large library which kept moving from town to town and from country to country. OK, large might be an exaggeration or at least a relative term, but I would say I have at least 1.5 thousands books. Many of them are professional books in physics, education, history of science, but I also have a number of classics and contemporary books… So why am I writing about it? Because technology today, in my view, allows us to enrich our reading experience tremendously. We can go to the book web site and watch an interview with the author, we can read about the author, see what other people thought about the book we are reading. We can certainly go to Wikipedia (another topic for discussion) and learn more about the time the book is situated in or about the problems raised in it. This certainly changed my reading experience… And what about how we decide what book we want to read. While earlier on we would hear recommendations from friends or colleagues at work, now we have Facebook or other communities (online book clubs, social groups, etc.) where different books are discussed. In short, nowadays we have no reason not to be reading… And what is even more important, we can write our own book reviews and discuss what we think about the books we read with other – who might be people on the other side of the globe for that matter. In my view, this is a very exciting development for book warms. It feels like the entire world of books is spread out in front of us. Ok, will go back to reading…