October 1, 2009
Curling Up With Hybrid Books, Videos Included
By MOTOKO RICH
For more than 500 years the book has been a remarkably stable entity: a coherent string of connected words, printed on paper and bound between covers.
But in the age of the iPhone, Kindle and YouTube, the notion of the book is becoming increasingly elastic as publishers mash together text, video and Web features in a scramble to keep readers interested in an archaic form of entertainment.
On Thursday, for instance, Simon & Schuster, the publisher of Ernest Hemingway and Stephen King, is working with a multimedia partner to release four “vooks,” which intersperse videos throughout electronic text that can be read — and viewed — online or on an iPhone or iPod Touch.
Some authors scoff at the idea of mixing the two mediums. “As a novelist I would never ever” allow videos to substitute for prose, said Walter Mosley, the author of “Devil in a Blue Dress” and other novels.
“Reading is one of the few experiences we have outside of relationships in which our cognitive abilities grow,” Mr. Mosley said. “And our cognitive abilities actually go backwards when we’re watching television or doing stuff on computers.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/books/01book.html
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I would use this article in a synthesis by trying to refer to thefact higlighted in the first and second paragraph which states that such innovations come with the modern, technological era in which we are in. However, such innovations may simply be regarded as tools and not as complete substitutes of books. In his article, Motoko Rich emphasizes this by quoting Walter Moslev; from the excerpt of the article I have read, no rebuttle to Moslev's words is provided, therefore this suggests Rich doesn't regard Vooks as complete substitutes of Books. this article is an example of how one doesn't have to choose between real books or alternative reading sources, one can learn to use both in concert.
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Books are changning as our technological knowledge increases. Vooks is just another form of literature that was enhanced by technology. Vooks bring both negative and positive ideas into a single art. Vooks by bringing video and literature together have clashed two polar opposite forms of art. While this may be controversial to many, it gives the reader the chance to relax from reading and to watch the book acted out. Vooks seek to give the reader both the pleasure of reading and entretainment in one pack. Vooks are a great innovation of the original books. Vooks will never be what books are, but they are a new technological approach to the subject of literature and its evolution.
ReplyDeleteI think Walter Mosely makes a good point when he states that reading helps our cognitive abilities grow, while computer work and watching TV make these abilities go backwards. I would use this article in a synthesis essay to emphasize the fact that while Vooks can intrigue the reader and make the story more engaging by playing it out at certain intervals, video could never substitute for written script. With new technology blossoming every year, inventors are coming up with more and more ways to make reading more "convenient", hence the new concept of combining videos with written prose in Vooks; but some of these gimmicks go too far. In my opinion, people are watching too much TV and spending less time reading books; we don't need to be adding more TV into book-reading.
ReplyDeleteI would use this document in my synthesis by quoting Mosley, and then explaining how the use of videos, instead of reading the book, takes away the essence of the books. By having a video shown to the reader, the reader doesn't need to imagine how things were in the book; so, instead of having the reader develop their personal opinion of the book, the opinion of the creator of the video is imposed upon the reader.
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