Internet and Our Reading Ability Essay

Internet has become a boon for all of us. It gave us the flexibility to get any kind of information on our figure tips, at the comfort of our home and that too very quickly. Few years back getting information about anything was kind of difficult and tedious. People use to read books, go through journals and old newspapers and so on and so forth to fetch any particular news or information. But with the internet boom, everything changed. People started using eBooks, online dictionaries, Wikipedia, online magazines, online journals. Internet gave people the flexibility to search for anything and everything they want with the click of a button, starting from a local address to international news with the search giant called Google. In current scenario, more and more people are becoming dependant on internet for everything in their life. With all these developments and internet dependency, the one billion dollar question is, does the Internet decrease our ability and interest in reading? Does the Internet decrease our ability and interest in reading? Internet, few years’ back this was not known to anyone or may be a very few people. Internet was known to be a medium to communicate, this served as a boon for the software industry and many other corporate. Post’s which took many days and at times months, could be delivered in just few seconds. This made communication fast and easy. Slowly internet expanded its areas and entered into normal people’s life. People started feeling the comfort of sending emails and communication easy and very quick. With the internet god, people starting enjoying the comfort and flexibility. Slowly with research and development, internet expanded its expertise. It became a source of information with huge database of information. Internet gave people the flexibility to get any kind of information that they needed, very fast. This added to people’s comfort and flexibility and they started enjoying the so called internet. As the information were made available, people started feeling the need of having flexibility to search for information with keywords and hence search engines like Google, yahoo, msn were born. Research shows that, as the demand increases, supply also increased. The same thing happened with internet. People felt the need to do more with internet rather than just reading/writing emails and getting information. Slowly internet expanded its wings towards the ecommerce. Groceries, garments, jewelries, greeting cards, flowers and gifts, computers and electronics everything became online. People reduced their showroom visits, and started enjoying the ecommerce which gave them flexibility to buy anything they desire with just few button clicks and with added benefits like home delivery. With so many flexibilities and comforts, people got addicted to the internet. They started enjoying the electronic or online world to be more precise. As the comfort increases, the desires also increase and same thing happened in the internet case. After ecommerce boom, came a big bash called web2. 0, it gave people more flexibility. Here the user was the king. Until now people were just reading information, purchasing items and so on and so forth, but with web 2. 0 concepts came a revolutionary change in the internet world. People were able to do lot many things like writing blogs, social networking, commenting and rating, sharing, collaboration, forming and joining online groups and communities. People were able to attending the online webinars, eLearning concepts, reading academic books or novels online, reading news online and so on. There is no end to the internet and the new concepts coming up. Internet gave people flexibility, flexibility to read, write, search, buy and do whatever they want and feel. Internet is like a genie for everyone, wish anything and you will get. Internet is not limited to big cities it expanded its wings to small villages also, making them all e-dependant. Despite of all these developments, internet didn’t stop; it grabbed its attention towards the students and teachers. Student started feeling the comfort of reading online, making notes, doing research and so on and so forth. Things which seemed like rocket science became a cake walk for them. Internet helped them in finding anything they desire. Students started spending more time online through internet than reading physical notes and books. Kids started playing online games hence reducing their outdoor games. As the internet came with so many comforts, people started enjoying them all and became internet addicted. Internet addition is more dangerous than any drugs. As and when people started enjoying their comforts with the so called internet god, they forgot everything else in life; they started spending more time online. Even for small information they started searching online. Their social circle got affected. But what happened next? Most importantly their patience level decreased towards reading. Earlier people use to read books with lot of patience, going though the index page, turning through the page number they want to read, bookmarking the page where they stopped and so on. But with internet their reading ability decreased. They started feeling impatient about turning page by page to get any information. Ctrl+f (find) became their all time favorite shortcut. They desired these types of shortcut and online methods in their normal life also. Internet which came as a boon for all of us, became a curse for the authors and writers, since people started feeling disinterested towards reading books, rather they preferred eBooks which are way simpler to read and navigate. EBooks provided them flexibility to click on hyperlinks and go to any particular topics, which is not possible through normal books. It gave them flexibility to search for any word they wish to find about in any particular topic or phrase. Internet totally changed the way people work. It changed people’s perception towards reading and writing. Those who were happy reading books started disliking them. They got so addicted to the internet that it became major part of their life for everything. Internet have spoiled people’s mind, thinking ability, reading ability, writing ability and many more things. Those who enjoyed going to libraries and renting books and reading them, now likes to go to online libraries and read eBooks. Those who enjoyed reading newspapers now like reading news online in news sites. Those who liked reading or knowing general knowledge through GK books now like finding them online through Google or any such search engine. Those who liked doing research by collecting books and as many articles as possible, now like going online and referring online articles, links and books. Everything changed! People find it flexible and comfortable to read online for one more added reason that is information is available free of cost. Internet gave people everything they can desire in their life starting from comfort, flexibility to knowledge, technologies, gadgets and widgets and many more things. But it took away the patience from them. People don’t want to apply their brains anywhere else but only on the internet and doing things online. Obviously why do they need to apply brains? When everything they want is getting them available efficiently, fast and with the same quality and with lots and lots of flexibility, why would they like to do things without internet. With all the points above, the only conclusion is the internet may be a boon for all of us to lead a comfortable life, but internet has taken away one very important things from all our lives, and that is readability. References http://news. zdnet. com/2100-9595_22-243997. html Is Google Making Us Stupid? http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Is_Google_Making_Us_Stupid%3F Internet Age: Are We Losing Our Ability to Read and think? http://www. realtruth. org/articles/090105-006-science. html Leonard, Pitts. Is the Internet robbing us of the ability to read — and think? http://www. sj- r. com/archive/x833711685/Leonard-Pitts-Is-the-Internet-robbing-us-of-the-ability-to-read- and-think Nicholas, Carr (2008). Is Google Making Us Stupid?