Media & Technology - Impacts of eBooks on the Society - Essay Writing Assessment Answer

Media & Technology Assignment

Assignment Task

Essay Question:How has a specific medium or technology (of your choice), produced an impact upon society?

The purpose of the essay is to critically examine a medium or technology using themes and concepts from the unit's lectures and readings and additional research. This will involve assessing and evaluating the relationship with and the impact of, the medium/technology on society

For your chosen medium/technology, critically examine (assess and evaluate the impact of the medium/technology on, and its relationship with, society) it using themes and concepts from the unit's lectures and readings and additional research.

The following questions* are provided as starting points for your analysis. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO ANSWER ALL OF THEM. You should choose which are the most appropriate for your chosen medium/technology as well as developing your own in the context of themes and concepts from this course:

Histories

When and how did the medium/technology appear? Who and what was involved in its invention and development? What did people imagine would its main use and significance? How was it actually adopted, resisted or ignored? Was the medium/technology used differently by different groups or people or in different parts of the world? Who were the early/late adopters of the medium/technology and what impacts did this have?

Discourses and ideologies

What are the ideas or discourses associated with the medium/technology? What do people think they do with the medium/technology? What are the affects and emotions associated with the medium/technology? How is the medium/technology represented/portrayed and written and spoken about in the media? How are ideas about what media is and what it does changed by this medium/technology?

Existing media

How did/does the medium/technology fit into or disrupt existing media? Are there new companies and organisations responsible for delivering new kinds of media associated with the medium/technology? What are the features and characteristics of these new companies/organisations? What are the economics of production, distribution, exhibition, consumption and business models of these companies/organisations? Who are the audiences and publics that come into being or realign with the medium/technology?

Cultural and social

How do/did people use the medium/technology? What is their actual experience of it, independent of the marketing/promotion of the intended experience of the medium/technology? What do they do with it and with whom? What are the particular cultures associated with the medium/technology? How does the medium/technology affect the larger culture and society? How are relations among different groups of people, and groups of things, altered, or believed to be altered, through the introduction of the medium/technology? Have there been 'moral panics' associated with the medium/technology? What are the ethical issues/implications of the medium/technology?

Introduction

Nowadays everyone knows about the media and technology. Common people do not have the depth knowledge of all media and technology but have the necessary knowledge about how to use it. Media and technology are changing the life of people and playing a major role in every field. The media is a tool for establishing communication between two or more people. There are different types of media tools are available including print media, digital media, and electronic media. For example, Newspaper, books, eBooks, news, radio, television, and so on are the examples of the media that provides information to the people of the society and establish communication between them. The technology is a concept that is applied to the media for gaining result that is more efficient. Both are affecting the living and working culture of the society.

The eBook is one another media that comes after the applying the technology on the print books. The essay discusses the development of the eBooks from the printed book. Along with, it highlights the ideologies, features of the eBooks, and its impact on the culture and society.

Main content

At this time, media and technology depend on each other to provide services to everyone. Media is used as a communication channel that establishes communication between sender and receiver in the form of messages with the help of the technology. These messages can be in any form such as text, audio, video, and animation. The technology is not a tool or product but the application of science that helps everyone for solving the problem of daily life. As most of the time, the common people thinks that the smartphones, tablet, microwaves, and other similar are the technology but these are the products developed after applying the technology and techniques on it (Little and McGivern, 2014).

Book is also a type of media that provides knowledge and information about anything. Everyone including student, teacher, or any other needs book to gain knowledge about anything. When the technology was not developed then only printed version of the books are used. After the development of the technology, the online version and electronic version of the printed books or eBooks are come (Stadler and OShaughnessy, 2008).

The following subsections discuss the history and development of the eBook, the major ideologies and discourses behind the development of the eBooks, causes that replaces the existing the printed books, features of the eBooks, and the impact of this media on the culture and society. They are as follow:

Ideology, history, and developments of eBooks

Earlier academic libraries contain only printed books and journals. It plays a major role in to provide access to an information across the learning communities, professional, and the scholars. However, when the demand for the academic libraries continue increasing across the world by the scholars and researchers then they need such media that easily available at any time. As printed books and journals takes a time to deliver and dispatch from one place to another place. Hence, the first effort started in the electronic books field in the 1970s.

In 1970, Michael Hart started a visionary project “Project Gutenberg” and published first eBook eText#1. The Michael Hart was a freshman at the University of Illinois [UI] and on July 4, 1971, he spends the night at the UI Materials Research Lab. At that night, he opened his first computer account. After opening the computer account, he was starting thinking that it was possible to bring the books to the computer in this information age. At the same time, he had a parchment copy of “The U.S. Declaration of Independence” that motivates to bring the text version of this. This book becomes the main reason of the visionary project “Project Gutenberg” (Lebert, 2009).

The main aim of the project was to create the electronic version of the literary works and disseminate it across the world for providing benefits to the learners. For this project, Michael Hart decided to search the books from the public domain that are available in the libraries of UI, digitize those eBooks, and then store it in electronic form means eBooks. He used the low set of ASCII [Plain Vanilla ASCII] for reading the eBooks on any hardware and software. Through this, printed book becomes a continuous text files rather than a set of pages. Anyone can easily copy, search, analyse, or compare such eBooks with other books. For some time, Project Gutenberg permitted to access and print eBooks with a small amount but in the 21st century, it permits anyone to access their digital library without paying any amount (Lebert, 2009).

In the last decades, unprecedented progress is taking place in an eBook publishing industry. The Project Gutenberg offering over thousands of resources in many different languages, electronic editions of works of individual authors, dictionaries, and so on across the world including U.S, Europe, Australia, Canada, and others. The Project Gutenberg started in the Australia in 2001 and uploaded near about 500 eBooks until 2005 (Lebert, 2009).

After the 1990s and advent of the internet, many publishers and book vender realizes the possibility of the providing content in the digital from and access a specific market. The National Academy Press of the U.S. was the first publisher in 1994 that post the full text of some books free. After this, many publishers started to use web and continue using it as a marketing tool (Lebert, 2009).

At present, different digital platforms are available that provides the eBooks in different formats such as pdf, mob, txt, and others. Along this, due to the development of the technology different types of devices and tools are available such as eBook reader, Kindle, Oblio E-Book Plus, iPhones, iPad, tablets, smartphone, and much more where anyone can easily read the eBooks (Tosun, 2014).

Definition of eBooks

The above section discusses the idea of the eBooks that how it comes in live but there is still no commonly accepted universal definition of eBook. After the launching of the Project Gutenberg, different authors had defined the various definition of eBook. Along with, the authors were putting attempts in the literature to define the eBook that considers the media, file format, device, and delivery. One of the working definitions of the eBook is, “an online version of printed books via the internet” defined by the JISC. The International Encyclopaedia of Information and Library Science changed this definition in 2003. However, most of people or reader uses the early working definition of the eBook (Vassiliou and Rowley, 2008).

Impact of eBooks on the printed books

The development of the eBooks is affecting the printed books in many ways. Here are some major points that highlight that why the eBook is affecting the printed book. They are as follow:

The printed book follows a long process of publication before launching in the book market. In this process, author first creates a text and contact to the particular publisher. After getting the approval from the publisher, type style, layouts, and other necessary design decided for the book. After this, the book is printed, distributed to the different retailers and wholesaler for its market. This process is very complicated, time consuming, and expensive. The eBook follows a simple publication process where authors submit their manuscript to the online publisher. They set up design and printing through technology. After this, it uses different digital media for the distribution of the eBooks. It makes this process very cost effective with less time (Wilson, 2014).

In the printed book publication process, when the number of copies of the book increase then the average cost per book decreases. In the eBook publication process, the delivery cost is zero and the increasing number of the eBooks is decreasing the number of titles of books (Stadler and OShaughnessy, 2008).

The contract based with advanced payment, physical delivery of the books, and the library culture of the printed book is forcing readers to use the eBooks. Along this, the high-quality interface, durability, linear delivery of content, flexibility, sharing, availability of the eBooks, and others are attracting to scholars, readers, students, and so on to use this media (Stadler and OShaughnessy, 2008).

These features or benefits of the eBooks giving the positive affect for the publisher but giving a negative affect the traditional book market selling. The positive impact of the e-Book is that through this, the authors easily produce and distribute the eBook in very low cost. This positive side is influencing the self-publication but disturbing the publishing industry, which is a negative effect on the printed book. After the development of the eBooks, most of the universities, organization, and government become the creator and self-publisher of the eBooks. The self-publisher industry and its associated authors are making a significant amount of money from the self-publishing process as compared to the print publisher. In a survey, it is found that there was only 11% self-publication of ISBN in 2007 and increased to 40% self-publication of ISBN (Wilson, 2014).

Due to the online availability of the books in anytime from anywhere is continue decreasing the selling book from the bookstore. The other negative impacts of the eBooks on the traditional book market selling include the reduction in the number of independent bookstores, closure of the borders groups of the printed bookselling chains, and closing of the many Noble bookshops. Every country including UK, Europe, and Australia is facing same problems. In a research, it is found that in the UK, there were 1535 independent booksellers in 2005 and reduced independent booksellers to 1028 by 2012. Similarly, in the Australia, the traditional book market was near about 20% market in 2005 and reduced to 5% in 2009 (Wilson, 2014). In simple words, the global traditional book market is continues decreasing per year which is a very important point to save the tradition of printed books.

Impact of eBooks on the society

The development of the eBooks affects not only the printed books but also the culture of reading of every people of society. The features of the eBook are attracting everyone including student, scholar, researchers, authors, and others. It is providing many benefits to the users such as less space consumption, easy reading, and searching of any keywords in the eBook, easy to carry, security, and so on.

The development of technologies and media is providing different types of hardware and software for every digital channel. It is increasing the number of eBook readers so much as compared to printed books. In a survey of 307 people, it is found that 22% people prefer eBooks for reading whereas 77% people do not prefer it. In addition, in 2009, idefix Library application service started to provide service to read eBook in tablets which in increased to 4 times to 150000 people in 2010 (Tosun, 2014). In simple words, the eBook is changing the traditional culture of reading the printed books.

Along with, the education industries, the business, and government organization are also producing eBook in form of their yearly report, financial reports, organization progress reports, Corporate Social Responsibility report, and others. The organization uses new interactive eBook with animation and some video clip for describing and marketing of their products and services (Wilson, 2014).

The printed books depend on the forest area and using woods as raw materials. Due to the globalization, the environment is changing continue and affecting the forest area across the world. It is decreasing the number of forest across all the countries and affecting the greenery of the environment. Every organization including government or non-government is trying to increase the number of forests. Hence, they are started to use eBooks and save the environment.

Conclusion

As soon as the technology is developing, it continues bringing different gadgets or products that are making the life very easy. After analysis of different facts of the eBooks, the essay concludes that the continued development of the eBook is bringing many substantial changes in the traditional printed book production, distribution, and marketing. Every media or technology has some positive side or negative side but in overall, they are solving many problems. Similarly, in this era of technology, the development of the eBook is also providing many benefits along with some negative impacts to the people and society