Personal Opinion on Media

 Today, there are many forms of media. I personally prefer the traditional form over the digital because of many reasons. Personally, I enjoy physically holding a book, and being able to flip through the pages, rather than sitting in front of a laptop or holding a device that strains my eyes. When I was in middle school, I used to go to the library during break time to read some books. Since then, I have developed a deep interest for reading books and have always enjoyed going to the libraries and bookstores. Today, the digital media and networks have created new products such as electronic books. This creation has profoundly changed the way of publishing. I have noticed that many books have been turned into electronic books, and are available in digitized form through E-books, Kindle and in apps. This digitization of books had caused many well established bookstores to go out of business. Personally, I have tried to adapt to this new form of media and I think that the electronic books have as much flaws as its benefits. I think that the electronic books facilitated the process for searching books to read; I could zoom in and read the texts more clearly as well as looking up the definition of specific words. However, it is frustrating that the medium used to read the electronic books constantly needs updates, requiring the user to spend more time learning and getting use to the changes. In addition, if anything bad were to happen to the device used for reading the electronic books, it will impede the user from their accessibility to the books, whereas a hard physical copy will always be available to the reader. Also, these devices are powered through battery, therefore it limits the usage of the device to a certain amount of time. As a reader, it is very annoying to be stopped in the middle of a story due to flat battery. Furthermore, the page swiping feature bothers me because sometimes the device is too sensitive to touch or too slow in reacting. Therefore I need to keep swiping the pages back and forth, trying to pick up where I left off. Below is the image that I found online in google. I believe that this image sums up today’s world of media; it puts all of today’s social networking into perspective in a traditional manner. In fact, I like these ideas of “vintage social networking” more. For example, social media is not my main communication channel. I do not have an Instagram, Tumblr, or Twitter account. Although I have created a Facebook and Skype account, I never had an interest using them to follow up people’s status, chat or video call. I do not use websites like Pinterest or Reddit. I would say the only exception is YouTube, where I use to watch some videos and hear some music. Overall, I am a more traditional person. I prefer reading hard copy books and communicating through phone calls or text messages.