Has internet killed the reading habit ???
Here is an excerpt from Yahoo Answers: (The best answer)
http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070505232959AAhxkkU
“In this technological modern world people in general buy less informative reading, because you can now get almost every information you need online. The internet has made it easier, and therefore more interesting to get new information, so more people now search for answers than before. Many newspapers have an online edition aswell, so people that don't buy it read the news anyway. The only thing the internet can not replace, is books. Even if it was possible, you would most likely prefer to have a book in your hand, instead of reading it on a screen.
So to sum up: internet has not killed reading habits. It has improved them, and it stead of not reading books anymore, people go to amazon.com to buy them”
The above might be contrary to the general notion….that internet….and technology in general….has been a major dampener …as far as the love for books/reading is concerned !
Here is another excerpt from an article on the subject from Christian Science Monitor:
“The reading experience online "should be better than on paper," Chi* says. He's part of a group at PARC developing what it calls ScentHighlights, which uses artificial intelligence to go beyond highlighting your search words in a text. It also highlights whole sections of text it determines you should pay special attention to, as well as other words or phrases that it predicts you'll be interested in. "Techniques like ScentHighlights are offering the kind of reading that's above and beyond what paper can offer," Chi says.
While readers might not feel a need to use ScentHighlights with the next Harry Potter novel, the software could help students, academics, and business people quickly extract specific information from other written material.
ScentHighlights gets its name from a theory that proposes that people forage for information much in the same way that animals forage in the wild. "Certain plants emit a scent in order to attract birds and bees to come to them," Chi says. ScentHighlights uncovers the "scent" that bits of information give off and attract readers to it.”
( Dr. Chi, of the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in California, USA)
There is a contrary view….equally potent about the decline of reading habits…
One study mentions a pertinent aspect…with respect to the qualitative trend in reading these days….
Decline in Reading of Literature and Books, Not a Decline in Reading.
So…what is really the case…
We would like to summarize as follows :
A certain type of reading….literary books….novels…..may have gone down….but the overall usage of the written word seems to have gone up….thanks to the internet !
New ways have to be innovated to catch the interest of readers…..earlier the focus was on superior printing and distribution strategies….now it is about easy access and usability !
Today’s social networking ‘addicts’ could be converted into tomorrow’s avid readers of poetry and literature/serious writing….if the ‘content’ publishers get internet savvy….At least most of them are not so…. As of present !
“Future of newspapers and magazines is on the internet”….this is a feedback we obtained during our recent dip-stick survey among a cross section of ‘opinion leaders’.
Internet has made ‘reference’ study into a new phenomenon….and convenient hyper links have….most certainly increased user’s accessibility to encyclopedias and published material etc. ….and this is a significant step in promoting the written word…….though not classically defined as reading…
