Why Books are Here to Stay

by Dongsoo Kim

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Posted on April 09, 2022

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I recently read an article saying, the ratio of people who read books is rapidly plummeting and people spend less than 10 minutes a day reading a book on average. New media or information sources such as Google search, Youtube video, Wikipedia replacing books is not a surprising news anymore. We can get as much as information as soon as we want, and simpler than ever. Then, I wonder what makes book still valuable and what makes people still spend their money and time buying, looking for good books. And based on what I experienced, I found two reasons why books should be here to stay.

1. ‘The most efficient’ information source

Typed information is still the most economical way to deliver a large amount knowledge and lessons specifically and accurately. Anyone who learned economics, or laws in college would agree that whenever we can get more information through two or three pages than what professors say. Lecture would be easier to understand and helps us look through the rough overview of a certain subject. However, if we want to learn deeply, and precisely, we need to read through a whole chapter. When I was student, I was often told by my parents that ‘Books are the cheapest one’. It means no matter how expensive a book would be, it always worth to buy because the knowledge I can get would be way valuable than how much I paid. Now we can easily find that online lecture is way more expensive than a one book even though those lectures only carry partial knowledge or perspectives of whole subjects. Then, what about online written information such as Wikipedia? Let’s move on to the next category.

2. Books with UI/UX

The footage above says, book delivers a UI (User Interface). True, and I would expand it with books’ UX (User Experience). When it comes to UI, interesting book jacket allure people to read it and well-organized books make people feel convenient to use. But Wikipedia or other knowledge-delivering communities can have those UI as well. The core purpose for books is in its UX, the value a book conveys to readers, the relationship with author, feeling of achievement, and so on. Those features cannot be substitutable with any media. Books is not just about the knowledge or information, it is about the story of author (even with economics books), “record of his or her existence”, and reader can feel bond upon it. While reader concentrate on books, it shows one person’s world, and we can feel it as a page goes on. And at last, you can feel accomplishment with reading up the last page and also feel motivated or inspired author’s, one human’s achievement.

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