Literature in the New Media

Over the weekend, I managed to stop by the local Barnes and Noble in Sioux Falls. While there, I noticed many covers for their e-reader, the Nook. I began to wonder if e-readers were really the future, or if they had fizzled out, like most technology like that does.

I did own a Nook for a while, but never really used it. I much preferred the feel of the real book, along with reading on my iPad's iBook feature. It felt silly to purchase new books on the Nook when I had already had a good majority of them in the physical, along with easily getting them onto the iPad when I got one.

My question came down to the idea of if the Nooks were just made to make money off of individuals. There were no real discounts to buying the books from the e-reader, except for free downloads of books that were in the public domain, which could be easily downloaded on the computer. The Nook itself costs over a hundred dollars, then the accessories, such as the cases, cost even more.

I view the e-readers as a con to make more money off of books, but that could just be my cynical outlook on capitalism.

Digital Inequality

One of the things that interested me the most about this chapter was the idea of the habitus. The habitus is the world that you grew up in and were socialized in. For example, I grew up in a much different one than my grandparents and my parents. I've grown up with more technology readily available to me, which influences my way of thinking and how I respond to different types of things. I was able to pick up on texting and use of different media than my parents have been, and even more so than my grandparents. Another example is the idea of how materialistic my grandparents are against how minimalistic I am. I am not very much into the flashy things, keeping most of my decoration and my life in a minimalistic way. My grandparents, however, feel the need to keep up with everyone else, needing to get the newer cars and needing to keep up on what is going around in terms of social media.

This idea also reflects the idea of the cultural capital, the idea that what we have shows our social class. Since I am a college student and do not have a savings account as large as my grandparents or a full time job like my grandparents have, I do not feel the need to spend the money that I have earned on things in order to keep up with everyone else around me.

Thug Notes

For one of my other classes, our assignment was to read Dracula. Since I was really confused with the story, I went in search of youtube videos in order to help with my comprehension. Thug Notes combines modern language with summaries of classic and contemporary works, and helps keeps things simple and easy to understand.