There are people that say the rise of e-books and being able to read a ‘book’ on the small screen of a mobile device will somehow lead to the downfall of society and the end of reading.
I’m worried about the longevity of the books in my electronic collection – especially because I have books on several different platforms that didn’t exist five years ago, let alone in five years time – whereas the paper books I bought as a student will exist in hundreds of years time.
But back to the idea that the media by which a story is consumed will have a detrimental effect on a generation of readers. I can’t see it. In fact, ebook readers with built in dictionaries make the experience of being educated and enlightened a lot easier.
Did you know that on most ebook readers, you can highlight a word and ask the built-in dictionary to define it. Not only that, you can share the definition as a note for future reference.
And thanks to that functionality, the word peregrination may not be lost for a few more years thanks to it’s use in ‘Cloud Atlas’.
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