Panel discussion: Reading in the Digital Era
We live in a time marked by one of the fastest media revolutions in human history. In just 15 years, the invention of the smartphone has combined all the media of the analogue era into a new, single universal device smaller than a paperback book. Suddenly, we all have convenient access to unimaginable amounts of audio and video content, we can surf the web, read books, newspapers and magazines, communicate with loved ones in distant continents, find our way around the streets of a nearby village or Timbuktu, anonymously harass people we do not like on social media – and much more. With all these options in our pockets, why should we still hold on to books? Are books relics of a vanished era or, on the contrary, do they open windows to worlds that screens cannot? From a cognitive point of view, what are the differences between reading the same text as a printed book, as an ebook, or listening to it as an audiobook? And last but not least, which digital objects can be called books and which do we call books but are actually members of a newly developing media family?
Session in English