The concept of creating a highly digital world is something that is very prevalent in society today. Personally, I believe that if these digital archives are created correctly they can be incredibly useful and elevate the efficiency in which people study, but the digital texts that we mainly use in school I find slightly aggravating. In school, from a personal experience, if the material is online it is simply a picture of the text. In this very scenario I will go to the library and print out the reading so I believe that today we still see majority of the resources on paper. I do however see a trend that is shifting with the waves of better technology. As time goes on more and more school will be done completely digitally providing easier access for students.
The advantages that come with creating digital artifacts are obvious. For one, the majority of people on the earth today own a smart device. A smart device is defined as an electrical gadget that will allow an individual to access the internet, surf the web, and connect with others. With the majority of text becoming digital and the overwhelming ownership of smart devices these digital texts become far more convenient for people to access than the actual written text. Furthermore, the more advanced digital archives allow a much easier way to dissect the information making studying easier and easier. If a digital archive is paired with some sort of visual analysis it allows the viewer to gain a broader understanding of the information before diving deeper into the real material. For this very reason I think that most school readings are done and distributed digitally. That being said, all digital readings I am given I will still print out because of personal preference While there are obvious positives, there are also some serious negatives. I personally find it much harder to retain information from a digital source than the physical text. While sifting through an actual book it is much easier take notes in the margins or even underline meaningful information. For those very reasons I still much prefer physical text to a digital version.
There is a lot of room for digital archives to grow and when they are perfected they will provide an efficient way of portraying information that hasn’t been seen before. The aspects of actual text that I find most useful are the abilities to take notes and highlight the important information. I understand that certain sites allow you to highlight the digital text but I still find it less than useful. If the archives kept a record of which pages you highlights it would make it much easier to go back and sift through the work you had done before much easier than archives I have accessed in the past. Another adjustment that I believe needs to be made is the use of margins. Today, we see a spaces underneath the test that allows you to take noted for the entire page, but with the actual text and a margin you can take notes directly next to the section of the reading you find important. With the addition of a visual component that provides a brief summary of the information and the ability to take clear concise notes on the digital texts I could see written texts becoming obsolete.
Clayton Wright is an economics major at Bucknell University. He transferred to Bucknell from Bowdoin College in 2017. Before college, he grew up in Summit NJ and attended The Pingry School.
