The Internet Today: Is Convience Outshining Substance?

With the recent popularity of internet, books have become a outdated unused thing of the past. Readers Digest can be thought of the first thing that identified and shaped the new American approach to reading at that time, and could also be argued as one of the main causes reading on the internet is how it is today. Convenience is key, Readers Digest was created to condense articles down so it was simpler for their readers to obtain information in quicker time. The internet in retrospect is the same way. We no longer feel the need to read countless pages about a subject, we would much rather read a small paragraph online summarizing what happened, even though we may only be getting half of the story. In Daniel Boorstins book, he states, “Whats wrong with our culture is preferring image to reality, part of something instead of the whole..”.  I agree with Boorstin to an extent, today’s culture is so rushed, needing instant satisfaction rather than taking time to enjoy something for how it really is. However, I feel like the way we take in information has changed for the good. There is just not enough time in our day to “get the full picture” of anything. I would love to read books about all the wonders of the world and long news stories of whats happening in different counties, but I just honestly don’t have the time. I’m blessed for the internet because I can learn so much of whats going on in all different parts of the world just by opening up a news page and reading a small portion of the story. Without this luxury, conceiving this information would take too much time and we would therefore be much more disconnected from the world around us.