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JiHyunParkSecondEssay 3 - 14 Feb 2025 - Main.JiHyunPark
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-- JiHyunPark - 29 Nov 2024 | | | The Digitalization of Print Sources and the Loss of Libraries | |
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> | Ever since the widespread access to the digital electronic medium of words on screen, there has been a steady decline of a physical material medium to store, share, and enjoy words manifested from the minds of humans. Instead, from carving “words” into nature and the development of ink onto paper, the new medium for the human language has escaped the material physicality it has historically used in digital electronic format. The digitalization of books, words, of images, has been met with exciting fanfare where the world has moved from putting ink on paper to tapping keys on a keyboard to create and write (or now type) their thoughts. Increasingly, the physical medium of ink on paper has been replaced with electronic versions. Perhaps my generation will be one of the last few that experience the educational transition from a paper medium to an electronic one as I step through the American educational system. I shifted from combing the modest collection of books offered by my school library to scrolling the enormous digital access granted to me by the internet. Before long, the lack of a library in my high school did not concern me nor did the 1000-page pdf of my Calculus textbook that I crtl-F through to reach the correct page. Before I knew it, the world beyond my classroom was also digitalized. The plastic-wrapped newspapers tossed in front of my home slowly disappeared, replaced with pre-formatted emails offering a subscription service to receive tailored news “right in my mailbox.” | | | | |
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> | The digitalization of books has many benefits that are enjoyed and celebrated today. Yet, the erasure of libraries as homes to books presents the loss of freedom of learning and spreading of ideas. The shifting of mediums not only limits reading but it also cripples our freedom to access information in books. The true "evil" of our library's destruction is not that we loss of these spaces but the symbolic nature of the limiting of our way of learning and consuming information. | | | | |
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< | Ever since the widespread access to the digital electronic medium of words on screen, there has been a steady decline of a physical material medium to store, share, and enjoy words manifested from the minds of humans. Instead, from carving “words” into nature and the development of ink onto paper, the new medium for the human language has escaped the material physicality it has historically used in digital electronic format. The digitalization of books, words, of images, has been met with exciting fanfare where the world has moved from putting ink on paper to tapping keys on a keyboard to create and write (or now type) their thoughts. Increasingly, the physical medium of ink on paper has been replaced with electronic versions. Perhaps my generation will be one of the last few that experience the educational transition from a paper medium to an electronic one as I step through the American educational system. Personally, my elementary and middle school placed crucial importance on school libraries and offering a physical place to borrow and read books. However, at the tail end of my middle school years, all students were offered iPads and increasingly, the physicality of written materials declined into some form of electronic digital medium. I shifted from combing the modest collection of books offered by my school library to scrolling the enormous digital access granted to me by the internet. Before long, the lack of a library in my high school did not concern me nor did the 1000-page pdf of my Calculus textbook that I crtl-F through to reach the correct page. Before I knew it, the world beyond my classroom was also digitalized. The plastic-wrapped newspapers tossed in front of my home slowly disappeared, replaced with pre-formatted emails offering a subscription service to receive tailored news “right in my mailbox.” | >
> | The Physicality vs. Electronic Medium | | | | |
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< | The digitalization of books has many benefits that are enjoyed and celebrated today. However, the shift from physical paper books to e-books has resulted in the loss of not only the actual paper books but also the spaces that hold them. The greatest loss of the electronic reproduction of books is not the loss of the physical paper book but the loss of the spaces that hold them; the loss of libraries. | >
> | One of the notable drawbacks of the shift to the e-book medium is that society’s capacity to learning is reduced. Many studies have reported that those who read in the paper medium present higher retention of what they read in addition to having higher measures of empathy and immersion.1 Furthermore, those who read in an electronic medium must read the same words multiple times to understand.2 This suggests that while there may be some form of “comfort” and “ease” with the shifting of the electronic medium, our decisions to move away from the physical format is placing limitations and downgrading our capacity to learn and digest information. | | | | |
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The Role of Libraries
Libraries are more than a storage unit that house physical volumes of books. Libraries are places that play a critical role in our communities. They manifestly represent places of opportunity, learning, and freedom for many people. Libraries are a public space for meeting both information and people [pg 101]. What’s crucial about libraries is the fact that they often offer free public space for people to meet and access a plethora of information. While information may become more accessible on the internet, physical spaces for nurturing creativity and concentrated reading away from the noise and short bursts of electronic media are critical in our current society.
Beyond just communities, libraries are especially important for the academic ecosystem of college campuses. Libraries on college campuses are places that offer not only knowledge but a place to connect students as a community. They play a critical role in campus culture [1]. Looking closer to home, an article by Ben Ratcliff for the New York Times explores Columbia University’s historical Butler University and notes that the library is a haven for the body and the mind [2]. While Butler is accessible to us as Columbia law students, the loss of our law library indicates that our law school community may be critically altered. | >
> | Additionally, an electronic medium is usually accessed through things like iPad, phones, and laptops. These devices are full of notification and noise that can distract readers from the full immersion. Devices for just reading presents other pressing issues as popular devices like Kindles are always presenting ads on screen, influencing the reader beyond the content they intend to read. | | | | | | | |
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> | The Publishing Oligarchy
The shift to the electronic medium is exacerbated by the current publishing industry. Currently, there are only about four major English publishers, with one of them larger than the other three. While not a monopoly, the English book publishing industry has become a clear oligarchy. The books that are being published and in turn, digitalized, are all controlled by a small group of industries. This suggests that the control over what information and what type of books get published and are offered in an eBook medium (and physical too) are all held by a small group. | | | | |
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< | Conclusion | >
> | As physical libraries holding books are eradicated and current mediums are shifted to a digital format, our access to books are guided solely by this oligarchy. By digitalizing and erasing current libraries that house physical books, our access to older books and information that may no longer “fit the narrative” is limited and denied. Through this, we lose our freedom to explore beyond what the four main publishing companies deem to be important or financially worthy. | | | | |
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< | While the natural progression and shift from physical books to digitalizing the printed medium may promote access to these books, the loss of libraries indicates not only a physical place of respite but can affect critical access to information. This loss of cultural information may affect our freedom to think and learn in ways that could be detrimental to our society and culture.
But the destroyers of the library and believers in the "post-print university" would firmly agree with you about the "meeting-places" and "social ecosystem" function: they have destroyed the library in order to increase, in their psychopathic retelling. of the crime, your ability to socialize, "work" and "learn" without the unnecessary obstacles presented by bookshelves. We aren't an overt-taxed town closing the library building for want of maintenance funds; we are spending tens of million, in the world's most expensive law school, on sterile Instagrammable decor, meant to illustrate admissions promotion. So the purpose is to exemplify hostility to books, to make you want a world of reduced literacy. It would improve the draft to take their argument seriously, so that we can see just how criminally psychotic it actually is.
Closer attention to the precise technology of reading would also help to improve the draft. A math textbook my be read mostly sequentially, because learning one's way through it is a linear activity. What forms of writing are not so intended? How does the tablet change the ability to think as well as read in those modes? What types of research depend on the physical structure of open-stack organization? Why is holding a copy of Blackstone printed at Oxford in the 1770s not the same way of learning the law as paging through an epub?
Some attention tot he political economy of the transition might also be valuable. In the last decade a trio of oligopolists have enclosed most of the world's legal and associated academic publishing. Their products now have zero marginal cost to them, but result in the comprehensive surveillance and continuing resource-extraction of and from every reader, every time. Coincidentally we are destroying libraries. Is that not worthy of some attention? | >
> | Conclusion | | | | |
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< | You have room. There are repetitions and loose phrasings you can dispense with. Getting 15% of the apace back through hard editing would not be difficult. And you have so much of value to use that space for,
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> | While the natural progression and shift from physical books to digitalizing the printed medium may promote access to these books, the loss of libraries are a symbol of the crippling of our learning and access to information. It is not the loss of the libraries themselves the representation of the loss of the physical books. This loss of our access to physical books affects our freedom to think and learn in ways that will be detrimental to our society and culture. | | |
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JiHyunParkSecondEssay 2 - 05 Jan 2025 - Main.EbenMoglen
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-- JiHyunPark - 29 Nov 2024 | | |
While the natural progression and shift from physical books to digitalizing the printed medium may promote access to these books, the loss of libraries indicates not only a physical place of respite but can affect critical access to information. This loss of cultural information may affect our freedom to think and learn in ways that could be detrimental to our society and culture. | |
>
> |
But the destroyers of the library and believers in the "post-print university" would firmly agree with you about the "meeting-places" and "social ecosystem" function: they have destroyed the library in order to increase, in their psychopathic retelling. of the crime, your ability to socialize, "work" and "learn" without the unnecessary obstacles presented by bookshelves. We aren't an overt-taxed town closing the library building for want of maintenance funds; we are spending tens of million, in the world's most expensive law school, on sterile Instagrammable decor, meant to illustrate admissions promotion. So the purpose is to exemplify hostility to books, to make you want a world of reduced literacy. It would improve the draft to take their argument seriously, so that we can see just how criminally psychotic it actually is.
Closer attention to the precise technology of reading would also help to improve the draft. A math textbook my be read mostly sequentially, because learning one's way through it is a linear activity. What forms of writing are not so intended? How does the tablet change the ability to think as well as read in those modes? What types of research depend on the physical structure of open-stack organization? Why is holding a copy of Blackstone printed at Oxford in the 1770s not the same way of learning the law as paging through an epub?
Some attention tot he political economy of the transition might also be valuable. In the last decade a trio of oligopolists have enclosed most of the world's legal and associated academic publishing. Their products now have zero marginal cost to them, but result in the comprehensive surveillance and continuing resource-extraction of and from every reader, every time. Coincidentally we are destroying libraries. Is that not worthy of some attention?
You have room. There are repetitions and loose phrasings you can dispense with. Getting 15% of the apace back through hard editing would not be difficult. And you have so much of value to use that space for,
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JiHyunParkSecondEssay 1 - 29 Nov 2024 - Main.JiHyunPark
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="SecondEssay" |
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-- JiHyunPark - 29 Nov 2024
The Digitalization of Print Sources and the Loss of Libraries
Ever since the widespread access to the digital electronic medium of words on screen, there has been a steady decline of a physical material medium to store, share, and enjoy words manifested from the minds of humans. Instead, from carving “words” into nature and the development of ink onto paper, the new medium for the human language has escaped the material physicality it has historically used in digital electronic format. The digitalization of books, words, of images, has been met with exciting fanfare where the world has moved from putting ink on paper to tapping keys on a keyboard to create and write (or now type) their thoughts. Increasingly, the physical medium of ink on paper has been replaced with electronic versions. Perhaps my generation will be one of the last few that experience the educational transition from a paper medium to an electronic one as I step through the American educational system. Personally, my elementary and middle school placed crucial importance on school libraries and offering a physical place to borrow and read books. However, at the tail end of my middle school years, all students were offered iPads and increasingly, the physicality of written materials declined into some form of electronic digital medium. I shifted from combing the modest collection of books offered by my school library to scrolling the enormous digital access granted to me by the internet. Before long, the lack of a library in my high school did not concern me nor did the 1000-page pdf of my Calculus textbook that I crtl-F through to reach the correct page. Before I knew it, the world beyond my classroom was also digitalized. The plastic-wrapped newspapers tossed in front of my home slowly disappeared, replaced with pre-formatted emails offering a subscription service to receive tailored news “right in my mailbox.”
The digitalization of books has many benefits that are enjoyed and celebrated today. However, the shift from physical paper books to e-books has resulted in the loss of not only the actual paper books but also the spaces that hold them. The greatest loss of the electronic reproduction of books is not the loss of the physical paper book but the loss of the spaces that hold them; the loss of libraries.
The Role of Libraries
Libraries are more than a storage unit that house physical volumes of books. Libraries are places that play a critical role in our communities. They manifestly represent places of opportunity, learning, and freedom for many people. Libraries are a public space for meeting both information and people [pg 101]. What’s crucial about libraries is the fact that they often offer free public space for people to meet and access a plethora of information. While information may become more accessible on the internet, physical spaces for nurturing creativity and concentrated reading away from the noise and short bursts of electronic media are critical in our current society.
Beyond just communities, libraries are especially important for the academic ecosystem of college campuses. Libraries on college campuses are places that offer not only knowledge but a place to connect students as a community. They play a critical role in campus culture [1]. Looking closer to home, an article by Ben Ratcliff for the New York Times explores Columbia University’s historical Butler University and notes that the library is a haven for the body and the mind [2]. While Butler is accessible to us as Columbia law students, the loss of our law library indicates that our law school community may be critically altered.
Access to Information
Contrary to the idea of improved access provided by technology, the digitalization of libraries also presents a critical issue to our freedom to access information. While we are now privy to more information due to having the internet at our fingerprints, the loss of physical libraries prevents access to information due to the commercialization of books. Legal methods of obtaining free books or information have become severely limited by commercial paywalls. Even reading the news has become difficult with multiple different news mediums preventing access to their information without paying.
The ability and ease with which the internet can manipulate, and feed information is an enormous concern for our freedom of access to information [pg 103]. In the library’s physical space, while the contents of the library may have been curated by an individual librarian, there is true freedom to explore the knowledge of books without additional interference. A person can parse through the many volumes gathered in the bookshelves without the fear of a third-party search engine tracking and feeding specific types of information to them.
Additionally, national and historic libraries preserve and carefully collect cultural and historical heritage which provide a rich source of information from political, ideological to social and cultural worth. Libraries, through the preservation of books, newspapers, and other physical mediums present values of cultural diversity, freedom to think and inspire, freedom of expression, and freedom of speech [pg 104]. The importance of libraries to gather, preserve, and offer a space for people to reach and explore these cultural pieces is truly an opportunity to access information that facilitates the freedom to think. However, the digitalization of these paper mediums and the removal of physical access to libraries will not continue or increase access as initially considered. Instead of providing quality information, the internet offers too much information and disinformation that is controlled and monitored.
Conclusion
While the natural progression and shift from physical books to digitalizing the printed medium may promote access to these books, the loss of libraries indicates not only a physical place of respite but can affect critical access to information. This loss of cultural information may affect our freedom to think and learn in ways that could be detrimental to our society and culture. |
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