In the past, knowledge was contained in books. Nowadays, knowledge is uploaded to the internet. Do the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages

A decade back, books were considered the paramount source of knowledge,

however

, in the

last

10 years, the internet has become a useful medium for expertise sharing. In my opinion

this

trend more disadvantages than advantages in terms of gaining cognitive abilities. The basic advantage of reading books is that reader has less chance of deviating from the subject and

secondly

, the authenticity of the material published on the internet is difficult to verify which is not the case with publications. A disadvantage of books could be their cost whereas online applications are cheap sources of knowledge.

To begin

with, textbooks are known to enhance the attention span of the reader. While reading from the hard copies a person is fully engrossed in the written material and there is very little chance that the reader will deviate from the topic. Reading material online diverts an individual's mind to heaps of links available on a particular topic which baffles the mind of the person and eventually the learning curve drops.

For example

, school students are encouraged to study from textbooks so that their attention span enhances gradually while studying and helps in the long run.

Thus

, focused learning is one benefit of gazing through the physical text.

In addition

to the above, publishers of the books available in the market are legally responsible for the material printed on the books sold by them. Contradictory, the source of publications cannot be authenticated over the internet and it becomes rather difficult to verify the details uploaded on various sites.

For instance

, renowned publishers like Pearson, Cambridge, etc. Take care of minute details printed on their editions else a small unverified entry in the text would tarnish their brand reputation.

Hence

, it can be inferred that the knowledge distributed is validated and rechecked at various stages before dissemination among the public.

However

, on the flip side, purchasing physical editions could be costly. Internet is relatively a cheaper source of sharing proficiency as most of the domains on the web are very competitively priced for users.

For example

, earlier people used to buy cookery books to learn different styles of cooking, but nowadays, scores of free videos are available on youtube where one can grasp different cooking methodologies and cuisines.

Therefore

, uploading and downloading the content from websites is relatively easier and cheaper than hard editions. To conclude,

although

the world wide web has slowly overshadowed the utility of books in recent times due to quick and easy information availability, yet the aspects where publisher identity is under wraps and focus to study is minimal cannot be ignored. With the advancement in technology, people have high hopes that online platforms will be able to address these issues in the impending future.