issue 155球拍

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球拍
ISSUE155 - "Contemporary society offers so many ways of learning that reading books is no longer very important."

Books, pens, erasers are the basic and typical equipments of students. How could a student go to school without a book? They would definitely be suspected of escaping from learning. But, now, thanks to the rapid developed technology, especially the Information Technology, it is more and more common for a student studying without books. In the future, book will be replaced gradually; in fact, in the past books were not always the necessity for passing on knowledge. Looking back to the history, it is obvious that which way--books, TV, tap or internet-- people choose for learning totally depends on their contemporary technology level.

In terms of learning knowledge, the technology functions in two ways-- providing new method, and reducing the cost of learning. When a new technology comes out, the new method would challenge the traditional ones' place, and reduce its market share with new features and new advantages. Then, as the technologies keep improving, the new method would not only be cheaper and cheaper but also more and more popular, and would replace the old ones finally. The print technology, improvement of paper production process and the IT wave could illustrate the process of learning methods change and helps us determining whether reading is as important as it used to be.

Reading books was not so popular originally as it is now. In the past, there were only two methods for people to acquire knowledge--one is orally teaching, the other is reading books. Since books appeared, it had been greatly welcomed due to its unmatched advantages book could long-term and accurately recording knowledge. However, books had not being accepted at first. Actually, books were only limited in the upper classes, and were merely used to record the most important events. Namely, the dominating method was still orally teaching. Why? High cost of printing book limited the potential of book as a learning method. It was not until 15 century when the more efficient print technology and large scale paper making method were innovated and spread, the public began to accept reading book as the main way to learn. Since then the book became the symbol of learning.

Come back to the contemporary society, how long will book keep being the symbol of learning? A powerful technology revolution, Information technology wave, might give the answer. Just like what book did, information technology would change us learning behavior due to its
convenient, efficiency and other merits. With a portable laptop, we can learn the anything we want in anywhere. And we can interact with software which makes learning more interesting. All those advantages could not be offered by traditional books.

It seems true as the topic predicts that reading books as a learning method is being challenged; however, it is far from being replaced. Book would remain the main knowledge resource for most learners in a long term. Compared with books, new method requires not only expensive equipments for individual learner but also huge investment in infrastructures. Thus, for most poor countries and families book would be a better choice, because they cannot afford the new method.

To be brief, in the contemporary world reading book as the dominating learning method is facing challenges come from new technology revolution. Meanwhile, considering the development step of new technology, books would not disappear in a long term due to its price advantage.