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The digital age has influenced our daily lives to an almost innumerable extent. We need directions: we check our phones. We have homework due: we submit it online. We want to watch a movie: we whip out our iPods and crank up the volume.
Print media are the last soldiers standing in the battle against digital conversion. However, all signs point to a future populated by e-books, electronic tablets that allow readers to download and access print media with the click of a button or the point of a finger. The possibilities of this increasingly popular technology has in terms of our experience with the written word are far-reaching and have tech professionals and gadget junkies atwitter as new developments are constantly in the works.
One problem the evolving technology faces is a battle of brands. Mankato School District's Director of Media and Technology Doug Johnson compares the issue to when VHS took on Betamax, or, more recently, to when blu-ray and HD DVD duked it out.
"The format of e-books is still in flux," he said. "[Consumers] are hesitant to invest heavily in a format that will quickly become obsolete."
With Kindle and Nook and dozens more vying for public support (and dollars), it's hard to know which will stand out above the crowd when the dust settles. And an increasing amount of companies are looking to throw their hats in the ring every day.
Backed by Sprint and looking to touch down sometime this year, the Skiff Reader boasts an 11.5 inch touch screen optimized for newspaper and magazine viewing that can bend like paper. It will also be able to connect to Sprint's 3G wireless network.
Others, like the Entourage eDGe, look to combine e-readers and netbooks into one package. The eDGe sports two touchvscreens that open side-by-side, making it easier to open PDF files while still running other programs. Stuffed with the usual amenities found in the average laptop or netbook, the eDGe - being called the world's first "dualbook" - launches this week for around $500.
In the enviro-crazed society we occupy today, the possibilities surrounding these machines can be easily applied outside the sphere of gadget-lovers. The role they may play in the future of education is something Johnson and others like him are focused on.
"My sense is that e-books - when fully developed - will offer some incredible opportunities for learners," he said, "[including] the opportunity for teachers to customize the materials for their curriculum, links to multimedia and other sources, artificial intelligence to provide tutoring services, the ability to do more group study and interaction, and of course, portability and ready access to the world's knowledge."
The advantages of e-readers and the more advanced technology that comes as a result of their application are increasingly exciting to fathom and explore. But some wonder if the advent of e-reading threatens writing as an art form, one that has thrived for centuries without electronic intervention.
In a column featured in the Feb. 14 edition of Minneapolis' Star Tribune, William Souder, a longtime journalist and connoisseur of the written word, throws e-books in with social networking sites as a technology looking to sink the art of writing and suffocate the personality of reading.
"I look at a device like the Kindle with horror," he said. Yes, "Moby Dick" might be able to be downloaded for free, but, in essence, "thanks to electronic publishing, this 656-page classic of literature is now worthless."
However, many are looking to what e-books will have to offer the art form, rather than steal from it.
"All art forms ... are constantly in a state of change and evolution," said Candace Black, poet and English professor at Minnesota State. She keeps reminding herself this fact - and that the new technology may improve the art - as her beloved print media looks to be in its last throes.
"Perhaps technology will 'allow' writers to do more experimental things with text and formatting, which would result in changes," she said.
Jacob Bohrod is a Reporter staff writer
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