I’m usually a bit reluctant to lug around a book or pull one off the shelf when I know I could open that and millions of others on my slimmer MacBook, but occasional moments remind me of the importance of the printed page in the digital age. Let me begin with a story about such a moment.
        Over the holidays I stayed at my grandmother’s house, an antebellum-era plantation home in northwestern South Carolina that’s been in my family’s possession since the 1880s. As you can probably guess, there’s a wealth of artifacts from the last two centuries there–paintings, furniture, certificates–but most interestingly to me, books. As I was perusing boxes of rotting tomes (my great-great-uncle’s medical school textbooks if I’m not mistaken) I came across a relatively newer item, a 1960 Compton Encyclopedia set with my great-grandfather’s name on the inner cover. I was intrigued.        Being a computer science fanatic the first thing I looked for was the entry for “computer” just to gawk at how enormous and slow machines were back in those days. I couldn’t find it at first, but the index redirected me to “calculator.” I flipped to that section and saw what I expected: people in neat suits inserting cards into refrigerator-sized black and white boxes covered with arrays of switches. What I didn’t expect, after mentally recounting the major changes in computer design that have taken place since the encyclopedia was printed, was to see something that hasn’t changed at all: the following entry, “calculus”.
       Suddenly, all the formulae and graphs I burned into my head freshman year of college came rushing back to me right before my eyes. There was even the obligatory “who invented calculus (Newton or Leibniz? neither, nobody cares)” sidebar discussion, which also closely mirrored the contents of my own text printed a few years ago. Being a math and CS double major I took particular delight in this juxtaposition. It may not have occurred had I been in my usual mode of reading for pleasure, on news sites (mostly The Economist, BBC, and Hacker News, all wonderful sources) and Wikipedia, which made the experience a special moment to me.
       If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time reading Wikipedia articles both for fact-finding and pleasure. (I know I’m not the only one, given its single-digit Alexa rank) These days, there’s a lot less need to get your information from libraries and bookstores since so much of that information is available online. Raw information fed directly to us is not a particularly interesting thing, yet we’re addicted to it: social media launches news articles, clickbait, ads, friends and family photos at us relentlessly. It seeks to consume every moment of our digital lives only to perhaps leave us feeling empty and unfulfilled of the knowledge we should perhaps acquire from being so entranced by media. (Some people wonder if Facebook is making us lonely or if Google is making us stupid, but I’m speaking purely from personal experience) What I know is that our sitting-and-reading time learning is probably better spent reading books and using the Internet as a tool for backing up our knowledge, rather than the internet being out modus operandi for acquiring information.
       The benefits of moving to books are obvious once you look. I found the neatly laid type and figures over the yellowing yet still thick pages of the encyclopedia to be much more pleasant to read than endless blocks of texts on one of my many LCD monitors. My vision’ become much worse over the past few years–and I’m only 20–due to my extensive computer use. Navigating the web and reading and writing code and docs is so easy it’s hard to stop. If you need to get something, just open a new tab and you’re there in seconds. When you’re reading a book, that’s all there is–if you want literally anything else, you need to pull your eyes away and maybe get out of your chair. I think most people know the advantages of reading off physical material (or a screen optimized for reading like a Kindle’s), yet why do we insist on doing everything on our LCD-monitor devices? Convenience.
       I’d argue that, just like how overindulgence in convenient (fast) foods is bad for our physical health, relying too heavily on digital sources for our information-gathering (as opposed to hunter-gather-ing) may be bad for our intellectual health. I’m not bashing people who rely on the internet for things–I’d be the biggest hypocrite alive if I did–I just want to encourage people to make an actual effort to obtain and read physical material. Every great book has a great story to tell, and who doesn’t love one of those? Even my favorite programming books (like Simon Holmes’ Getting MEAN) read like stories. When we make the physical effort to pull yourself away from the stresses of the life and the world projected onto us by our computer screens and engross ourselves in a narrative–be it funny, informative, technical, or otherwise–we get a sense of satisfaction from our accomplishment of staying focused and getting information the old-fashioned way. It’s all still quite accessible as well.
       Physical books may be expensive, but used ones are cheaply available online, and last time I checked public libraries are still a thing. So go ahead–be a dinosaur, and delve into the wonderful world of books. It’s all at your fingertips.