Paper or The Screen?

            There really is no other feeling like reading a good book. Sometimes I miss the times where I could just sit back and relax with a good book, but nowadays with so many distractions it's hard to find a long enough period of time to actually spend enough time reading any book. In this increasingly digital age, the pleasures of reading books are lost on the internet and its articles.

            Although distractions from books were present before in the form of magazines, comic books and graphic novels, they don't even compare to the distractions that the internet brings. Reading magazines and comic books weren't considered really "reading" because you usually just flipped through the pages as will, there was really no concentration or thinking involved because you were mostly looking at images and skimming through words. In the case of books, you really need to pay attention, and for a long period of time. You need to read every word, imagine every scenario and it really requires you to interact with the piece of writing instead of just flipping through the pages.

            The internet has become just like the comic books and magazines, it requires no real attention span, you can just flip through websites and pictures, skimming through words, and creates the illusion of reading. In the New York Times Article by Rich, he mentions that "reading in print and on the internet are different" because readers can just skim through articles, perusing through sites that have no correlation to one another and they can start and stop their session whenever they want, while books have a certain path the reader has to follow and they cannot just turn pages at will as they need to start at the beginning and work their way to the end. A book requires a long attention span and plenty of imagination which the internet has eliminated in the most recent generations because we are able to read whatever and how much ever we want and change topics with just a click of a button.