GRE Issue Exploration - 1

Question:

In this electronic age, reading has inevitably taken a back seat to watching television and gleaning information from the World Wide Web. People learn far more readily from electronic media than they do from print.

Response:

Human beings are curious creatures who differentiate themselves from other living forms through their curiosity. Each of us likes to explore the world in our own ways and formulate ideas and theories which we then need to tell others. There are various forms of communication but one form of communicating ideas became especially popular after the invention of printing press during the Industrial age. That medium of communication was books. The printing press enabled mass creation and distribution of ideas in the form of books. Infact, the first book published was Bible which enabled people to understand the teachings of Jesus better and reduced their dependence on the Church.

Today, however, a new medium of education is emerging i.e. electronic media. Electronic media has two major advantages over print media. Firstly, it has more capabilities and engages a human mind better by incorporating colorful moving pictures, enchanting sounds and providing information in small chunks connected with each other through hyperlinks. Secondly, it is a lot cheaper to distribute electronic media through the means of dvds, cds and internet.

According to various studies on human mind, it has been found that more the number of senses involved, better the learning becomes. For instance, all of us remember the pungent smell of ammonia during our high-school chemistry classes though it is a lot harder to remember the chemical formula for ammonia. Similarly, it is very easy to remember a story from a movie while it is a lot harder to remember an essay written by Ayn Rand on capitalism. Thus an idea communicated using electronic media leaves much deeper impact than an idea communicated using an impassive essay. To drive my point further, I want to ask you a simple question. What will help a child learn the animals better? A book with various animal pictures along with their names and characteristics. Or an application which allows the kid to watch animals living in their natural surroundings, an application which allows him to feed the animals, listen to their sounds and provide meaningful information as commentary.

Another area where electronic media, particularly the internet scores, is the connectivity of information. The connectivity helps in establishing connections. Our brains are not serial processing machines. Infact, our brains are like this huge jungles where small walking trails get established as more and more ideas walk through the same trail. Thus, an electronic media, by establishing more connections, helps in creating more walking trails, criss-crossing each other to create a network of ideas in our minds.

Another aspect which contributes towards the popularity and consumption of electronic media is the cost involved in creating and distributing content. Electronic media is very cheap to distribute. This means that consumers will move towards electronic media. Also, with the means such as internet, anybody can go ahead and publish their own ideas. On the other hand, getting a book published by a publishing house involves cutting through layers of beaurocracy. Although, additional layers mean additional hassles, discouraging novice writers not passionate about their work, it does not necessarily mean a better quality. Also, an idea-consumer in general, is better equipped to make a decision as to which ideas to consume. On the contrary, it also means that more idea generators will move towards the electronic media.

But then, what happens to the tradition of sitting in a lounge chair with a paperback novel in hand while enjoying the sun on a bright summer day in your own backyard. Can that romance of reading a book without getting distracted by a thousand advertisements be ever recreated in electronic media? Maybe it can, maybe it won't. But for the time being, it seems, that people are watching a lot more television and browsing the internet far more heavily than investing their time in reading a good old paperback novel.