No, it's not a trend at all. However, it's interesting to read how college students (we've posted three so far), people who have grown-up with mega amount of technology feel about a technology they could be/will be using at college sooner than later. Specifically, reading eBooks.
Last week, we posted two columns by two different writers from two different universities (U. of Maine and Marist College). In both cases the student journalists were far from becoming eBook fans. That said, both understood that eBooks were the way technology was heading. One thing both columnists mentioned was how much they liked the smell of books, especially new ones.
Today, Alex Kuskowski, the literary columnist for The Daily Cardinal at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, shares her thoughts in a column titled, "Alex can’t rekindle her love of electronic books."
Here are a few of her thoughts:
I’ll be the first to admit I’ve never been one for technology. We’ve never really got along, and by that I basically mean I’m a human circuit breaker.
[Snip]
Unfortunately for me, like the phrase “GTL” (which stands for gym, tanning and laundry according to the cast of “Jersey Shore”), technology is creeping into my life, and I feel both are something that must be reversed immediately.
[Snip]
As exemplified by the focus of my rants, I am all for people reading; however, I have to stand up and defend the printed word from these attacks.
Take the idea of trading up to an electronic version of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.” You will be paying about the same price to carry around a lighter version of that beast of the novel, but you will lose the overawed stares of those around you when you pull it out for some light, before-class reading.
So retain the moral high ground with me and stick to reading the printed word. Trust me, even at the Kindle price of $9.99, it’s not worth losing the irreplaceable new book smell and the oh-so-important bookshelf bragging rights. Cause that’s really what it’s all about.
Btw, like both columns we talked about from last week, this writer also talks about the smell of books. As I said last week, perhaps some eBook manufacturer will devise some type Smell-O-Vision/air freshening device that would release a dose of new book smell every few minutes. (-:
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Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.
A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?
Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.
What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?
Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).
FreePint Family
Quilting big data threads
The fallacy of information overload
Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure? 
