24 March 2012

Technology reading revolution, poke, poke

Have you seen the video of the baby playing with a phone or an ipad? I also saw one of a baby looking at a magazine and when she poked the pictures and they didn't do anything she cried. This generation won't have a concept of a mouse and maybe not even a keyboard. Things they are a changing. After one year with an ipad and ebooks, I find some of my own habits are changing. I go back and forth between and ipad and a macbook. I know the difference. It's clearly not possible to use the computer as a touch screen yet without thinking I pull up a web page and reach up and tap the screen of my computer. I've also had trouble finding the place I want to put my cursor in a document and reached up and tap to move to the location I want. I know with my conscious brain that it doesn't work, but some part of me is on automatic pilot and does it anyway. Yes, people will laugh at you if they see you do this. While I'm reading an ebook, I particularly enjoy being able to tap a word and have the definition pop up. You don't need that very often but it's a fun way to find a new word. If I'm reading a paper book, I confess I am not ambitious enough to lay down my book and go find a dictionary to learn the true definition of the new or unfamiliar word. I just infer it from the context and keep moving. Now I have not yet actually tapped a word in a paper book for the definition but I will admit that I have unclasped the book from my hand and hovered over it for a second before I realized what I was doing. Yes, you can laugh. I had a habit in the past of just keeping the page number I stopeed reading a book on in my head. When I picked up the book, I flipped to that page and kept going. The ebook keeps track for you (unless you switch to your phonee and then back then you'll have to search without the aid of page numbers). For some reason since I've started with ebooks, I find it hard to keep my page number in my head for my paper book reading. Although it is just possible that this has something to do with a busy job, learning a foreign language, and...getting older.