In ancient times most writing was done on scrolls similar to this one. They were not able to hold very much writing on them but poets and philosphers mostly used them as references while giving public readings. Eventually, this scroll was not big enough to hold all of the thoughts these great writers wanted to transcribe and a need for a more suitable writing space was created-the codex. The codex was many scroll pages bound together to make a larger writing space. This eventually led to the book. As the need for knowledge grew, writers eventually created the encyclopedia.
The encyclopedia was a great addition the world of knowledge. These large books were divided into the main disciplines and contained all the knowledge about them. In chapter 5 of Jay David Bolter's book Writing Space, the encyclopedia is seen as a gateway to electronic knowledge. By categorizing the information, the encyclopedia had become an endless resource. Today, the world wide web serves the same purpose. Each day hundreds,even thousands of people hop onto google's search engine trying to find information. Bolter sees the book as becoming a reference to the web abd eventually obsolete. Because the web is so easy to access and contains an infinite amount of information, people may start to forget that books and even libraries exist. Our world is filled with endless technology geared towards making our lives easier.
With invention of hand-held devices, such as the Amazon Kindle, people have access to any book that has been published. Bolter is hinting at the possibility of books becoming a thing of the past. Electronic books are more convenient for people. They can be treated as real books with the ability to mark it the way you would a traditional book. And when you are done, you can just delete it and download a new one. There is no need for accumulating unwanted clutter. It looks like electronic books will take the place of an actual book. The world wide web has given us an endless amount of possibilities when it comes to information. Bolter states that "Cyberspace is a great book of cultural choices that overlap and coincide with the "natural" order (98).
The electronic world is taking over so many things in our lives. Not only can we read entire books or find out information about dolphins, we can also read our local paper or any national paper with the help of the web. In my last post, I wrote about citizen journalists and how they are taking the news into their own hands. With the help of the web, they are able to post "news" that they deem important. Print journalism has taken a heavy blow with the invention of the web. With up to the minute news about everything, who wants to wait for a newspaper to come out. By the time the paper is printed the news it contains is old and something bigger and better is already taking place. It seems that print may soon be going out of style for since both books and newspapers have been electronic. The electronic world has taken it's place in our society and soon books and newspapers will be considered as old as the papyrus scroll.
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