Stay tuned to our new posts and updates! Click to join us on WhatsApp 
& Telegram 
Channel
& Telegram Channel 
The L&C-Silhouette Basket
A hand-picked basket of cherries from the world of most talked about books and popular posts on creative literature, reviews and interviews, movies and music, critiques and retrospectives ...
to enjoy, ponder, wonder & relish!
to enjoy, ponder, wonder & relish!
Is Reading Books More Important than Surfing the Net?
August 20, 2013
This is the age of the new media and the internet has come to occupy the center stage.
By Vedabhyas Kundu
“I love to lose myself in other men’s minds. When I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me.”
– Charles Lamb, Last Essays of Elia.
Reading has always been considered a healthy trait. Besides being instrumental in building perspective, it induces knowledge and enhances understanding.
This is the age of the new media and the internet has come to occupy the center stage. First it was the onslaught of TV and now of the internet, many pundits have started to opine that reading books would sooner or later go down in history.
Instead of assiduously reading the written words in one’s favorite book, these pundits believe that many would turn to surf the net. Of course, the internet has opened up unlimited opportunities – an infinite reservoir of information. One can easily get addicted to it and spend long hours surfing innumerable web sites.
The book is fixed and the fixedity is crucial. Another new challenge in this age is not to accelerate information, but to slow it down.
Does all these mean death-knell for books and thereby reading habits? I do not think so. Books have survived the onslaught of TV and are still going strong. It will do so despite the advent of internet. Publishers are devising new methods to lure readers. After all, reading helps an individual for more ‘in-depth understanding’. In this context one is tempted to quote Jeremy Golher, “A man may as well expect to grow stronger by always eating as wiser by always reading.”
Also to develop a proper insight on a particular subject, it is important to relate it to one’s mind – to make a mirror image. The book is fixed and the fixedity is crucial. Another new challenge in this age is not to accelerate information, but to slow it down.
Information is already going fast enough by itself. As human activities are accelerating everyday, the challenge is to decelerate it, make sense of our relationship to information and to deal with it in a rhythmical way. In such a circumstance, it can be underscored that the structure of thinking is nowhere in evidence on the net. Through reading, there is bound to be acceleration of thought. Reading would continue to give people time to think and turn it into serviceable knowledge. Unlike the internet or even oral communications, books would continue to hold a fixed mirror to individual development.
In this backdrop, it can be safely said that reading books is more important than surfing the net.
This article was first published in Meghdutam.com (between 1999 to 2002).
Silhouette Magazine is a platform for gathering myriad views on film (and allied art forms) and to continue with the flux of discourse. The Silhouette publications are our attempt to achieve this goal.
All Posts of LnC Silhouette Magazine
All Posts of LnC Silhouette Magazine
Hope you enjoyed reading...
... we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading and supporting our creative, informative and analytical posts than ever before. And yes, we are firmly set on the path we chose when we started... our twin magazines Learning and Creativity and Silhouette Magazine (LnC-Silhouette) will be accessible to all, across the world.
We are editorially independent, not funded, supported or influenced by investors or agencies. We try to keep our content easily readable in an undisturbed interface, not swamped by advertisements and pop-ups. Our mission is to provide a platform you can call your own creative outlet and everyone from renowned authors and critics to budding bloggers, artists, teen writers and kids love to build their own space here and share with the world.
When readers like you contribute, big or small, it goes directly into funding our initiative. Your support helps us to keep striving towards making our content better. And yes, we need to build on this year after year. Support LnC-Silhouette with a little amount - and it only takes a minute. Thank you
Got a poem, story, musing or painting you would like to share with the world? Send your creative writings and expressions to editor@learningandcreativity.com
Learning and Creativity publishes articles, stories, poems, reviews, and other literary works, artworks, photographs and other publishable material contributed by writers, artists and photographers as a friendly gesture. The opinions shared by the writers, artists and photographers are their personal opinion and does not reflect the opinion of Learning and Creativity- emagazine. Images used in the posts (not including those from Learning and Creativity's own photo archives) have been procured from the contributors themselves, public forums, social networking sites, publicity releases, free photo sites such as Pixabay, Pexels, Morguefile, etc and Wikimedia Creative Commons. Please inform us if any of the images used here are copyrighted, we will pull those images down.
One thought on “Is Reading Books More Important than Surfing the Net?”
Leave a Reply
Today’s Motivation
Take care of children with sensibility and raise them with love and affection because they are our future generation who will take care of the country tomorrow.
I agree by the quote of Jeremy Golher,” “A man may as well expect to grow stronger by always eating as wiser by always reading.
Reading habit is important for a human being as like as brushing your teeth daily in the morning…..:)).
Moreover reading books helps all of us in -depth and thorough knowledge!!!
Hence I prefer to read books rather surfing the net.
Thanks for the nice advise and sharing nice article…….
.