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Print in a Digital Age

The importance of print media in an era dominated by laptops, smart phones, Kindles, and eve-
rything digital. Pros, cons and why we shouldnt kill off print media just yet.

Cote Lewis
David Tompkins

F
rom smartphones and laptops that put the world at
your fingertips to watches that give you the latest news
updates and refrigerators with the ability to tweet I
think its safe to say that our society is consumed by
digital media. While some are more practical than others, its
quite possibly that tweeting your latest Pinterest fail from
your refrigerator might be enough to make Johannes Guten-
berg roll over in his grave.
The digital world has clearly taken over and its safe to
say there is no turning back. While this rapidly advancing
technology certainly has its scholarly benefits along with the
ability to entertain the idle mind, many scholars feel there
could be just as many disadvantages. We discussed these
cons with a handful of writers and scholars to show how print
media hasnt lost its mojo just yet along with how your digital
tendencies might be hindering your academic progress.
So, its the night before your first EWM class and youve
decided to read the online material posted to Blackboard in
an attempt to get ahead. Everything seems
great, youve got Twitter pulled up on one tab and your
readings on another. You arrive at class the next day and
the teachers lecture doesnt quite click the way you were hop-
ing. You recognize a few key terms but struggle putting to-
gether the puzzle.
Author and Emory University English Professor Mark Bau-
erlein spoke to us about the pitfalls of online reading and
how students can better prepare themselves in the ever-
evolving digital classroom. Bauerleins stance is simple and
believes that perhaps its time to take two steps back before
taking one forward in respect to eLearning. He referenced
Jakob Nielsens research of online readers and their ten-
dency to quickly skim text losing more and more focus as they
skim. While you might want to flick your way through your
Facebook feed taking the same approach to online reading
can leave you disconnected from the subject at hand.
Bauerlein expressed that it was all about slowing the
reading process down when reading online quoting fast
scanning doesn't foster flexible minds that can adapt to all
kinds of texts, and it

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doesn't translate into academic read- Printed copies glossy pages are trans-
ing. Bauerlein goes on to say We ferable and do not require the af-
must recognize that screen fordances of Wi-Fi and power source.
scanning is but one kind of reading, a Whereas online versions can be
lesser one, and that it conspires against bogged down with video and hyper-
certain intellectual habits requisite to links, distracting you and thus changing
liberal-arts learning. your perception of the information or
Bauerlein isnt the only academic to story.
worry about the reproductions the dig- In our final attempt to save print
ital world is having on todays students. medias reputation from the depths of
Both Jody Shipka and Nicholas Carr of their composing practice. the latest fail blogs, we spoke to author
hold a similar view to one another and We then sat down and interviewed Malcolm Gladwell about the im-
believe the digital world has led to a Nicholas Carr to gain some insight on portance of balancing print media with
loss of depth in academics. the importance of print media and to its digital nemesis. He begins by re-
Shipka, an Associate Professor of find out why he thinks the digital age is minding us how many jobs rely on pa-
English at the University of Maryland, changing the way we think. Carr tells us per on a daily basis. Gladwell tells us
Baltimore County, takes a linear ap- that todays students are losing depth that many companies and career fields
proach to her argument telling us that of information due to the distraction of rely heavily on paper and its functions.
equating multimodal affordances of hypermediacy. He explains that in to- Gladwell explained to us in detail
digital media to that of print may se- days society, students rely too heavily about how air traffic controllers still use
verely limit the kind of texts and com- upon the technology at hand which paper to keep track of each flight.
municative strategies or processes stu- causes them to want to use shortcuts. These sheets include their arrival and
dents explore. She explained to us, if Carr blames the internet and computers departure times among other flight in-
we are committed to providing students for creating this type of educational formation as they participate in an un-
with opportunities to become increas- fault and states that when reading on choreographed ballet on the control-
ingly cognizant of the ways texts and the computer, the information is not ab- lers desk. He goes on to say, Paper is
various kinds of technologies provide sorbed the same as when reading on spatially flexible, meaning that we can
shape for, and take shape from the his- printed forms of media. Carr claims spread it out and arrange it in the way
toried environments in which they are that the hypermediacy is a large dis- that suits us best. Keeping balance in
produced, circulated, valued, and con- traction to todays students. todays society is hard but necessary
sumed, I think we need to resist equat- Jay David Bolter and Richard because paper provides us with certain
ing multimodality with digitally based Grusin talked to us about how we strive affordances that even technology
or screen-mediated texts. for immediacy within remediated sometimes lacks. Another example
According to Shipka the digital works. They explain to us how once me- Gladwell gives us is how paper allows
world has presented us with shortcuts diums are remediated the experience is for businessmen to benefit when pre-
that fail to provide students with an un- never truly the same. Bolter and Grusin senting in a meeting saying, this idea
derstanding of the messy, multimodal, contend that once something has gone that paper facilitates a highly special-
historied demotions of all communica- into remediation, the way the infor- ized cognitive and social process is a
tive practice. She finishes by explaining mation is absorbed isn't quite the same. far cry from the way we have histori-
that ultimately students should assume One example they provide is when is a cally thought about the stuff.
more responsibility for determining the book is printed and bound together, the So how just does one majoring in a
representational systems that best suit experience differs from reading a dig- field that is dominated by digital me-
the work they hope to accomplish and ital copy on a kindle or an iPad and dia find a balance? While the digital
share the details even more so once a book has been re- world allows us certain affordances its
mediated into a movie. This remedia- safe to say that it has its pitfalls as well.
tion is similar to todays magazines, as We as a society take for granted the
printed copies are experienced much importance of paper and just how much
differently than the online versions. it impacts our daily lives. Dont be
afraid to crack open a book
for your next research as-
signment and remember that
Paper is spatially flexible, meaning that we can spread it the new always comes from
out and arrange it in the way that suits us best. the old. No one knows where
wed be without print media,
Malcolm Gladwell but we do know where we
are because of it