Background

Technological enhancements have already revolutionized how society acquires the majority of its media content. Many people now learn digitally from a combination of personal blogs and other alternative media. In the case of newspapers, the average person reads print and online news very differently. Digital reading encourages quick and fragmented examination, just allowing enough time for the reader to obtain a brief summation and move on. Similarly, most electronic book (e-book) readers use search functionality to virtually skim the text for relevant information. Content delivery is increasingly fragmented and may hinder scholarship. But in this digital age, increased access to digital information is desired. With the move toward advanced technologies, Winter (2007) suggests “the book as we know it is in a state of flux…even if books remain the same, reading has already changed” (p. 1). This topic is of great importance as understanding the way people learn can change the landscape of academia and can also have far-reaching implications for communicators. This paper will touch upon pivotal research on both e-books and bound books to see how learning has changed and how it will further evolve in the future.

E-book technology is not new: “an initial wave of enthusiasm for e-books lured a number of large commercial publishers into setting up electronic publishing divisions in the heady times of the dot.com era…(b)ut the hopes for an early booming market never materialized” because proprietary format issues made e-book files incompatible between dedicated readers (Thatcher, p. 130). According to Orsdel and Born (2002), electronic journals (e-journals) enjoyed instant popularity; in 1994 there were fewer than 75 peer-reviewed journals online, in 2002 75% of Science Citation Index titles were online. Because this popularity was thought to spill over into e-books, “little thought had been given to the user needs for, or user reactions to, the e-book. It was made available because it could be made available” (Armstrong and Nicholas, 2006, p. 3). Publishers and technology companies haphazardly pieced together content and products without understanding their implications.

Technology’s Earmarks

A recent NY Times piece tackles the idea that something gets lost with our society’s change from phone to email communications.

THE self-knowledge gleaned from a few years’ worth of phone calls is unquantifiable. So it’s unlikely that consultants and organizational learning strategists will pay it much attention. But recently I walked the halls of my old office, and they were cemetery-silent at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday. No yelling, no giggling, no breathless appeals, not even a perfunctory “Hello, may I speak to. …”

When the stock market crashed my great uncle Pat was working as switchboard operator at a large hotel in New York City. It amazes me just thinking about what all went into a phonecall. You had to really want to talk to someone, have the patience to likely get disconnected somewhere in your attempts and then have a middleman in the entire process. Now, most of our communications consist of emails that look disjointed and incomplete.

For work I see the benefit of emails, they are an instant paper trail. And I have definitely been guilty of google-ing a person to get their email instead of using the phone number they left. Sometimes I cannot be bothered, and it really seems to me the quickest way to get any point across. The idea of phone tagging one another for a couple days seems silly.

Even with friends, phone conversations are a luxury these days. Different time zones and busy schedules do not make for calling ease. Sometimes I will go months with only email, or even g-chat updates from friends. I do love sending letters, but it’s hard to find time for that lately as well. Skype has become a new best friend of mine, and has allowed me to keep up-to-date on my Lis in London. To see her, and her bright happy shiny apartment is almost to be there and give her a hug. But what is odd is that I know more about what is going on with my friend over the pond than with my friends right here in my own city. Hmm.