Books are an important element to everyone’s education, career, and overall life. This may seem as quite an opinion, but books not only defined a generation, but nations, and beliefs were generated off of literature and books. Literature in general is becoming less and less important to the younger generations, and older ones, with the coming out of e-readers, and television, and other technology.

Technology isn’t all bad of course, Social Media, and internet in general has made the lives of millions of people easier, and more accessible. But with new ways of life coming in, other ways are being pushed out. For example, good old fashioned books are becoming less and less popular among teens, young adults, and children. As it becomes more available, even the older generations are becoming more familiar with technology.

Next brings the idea of a technology dominated and dependent world. This is a bit on the extreme side, but there have been and are ideas of trying to accomplish a techno-world. For example, movies that take place in a technology dominated world like The Matrix and Pacific Rim, Prometheus, Wall-E, Ender’s Game, and Tron Legacy. These movies are created around the idea that technology is both a good and bad thing, and throughout the films, the characters realize that the technology that they have is either too developed, or that they needed to make it better, or they needed to branch off from all the tech and experience life the old fashioned way.

At the other end of the spectrum, having some technology in the world and generation is vital. We need to have some way of communicating with others and keeping up to date on outside events as a citizen. If we didn’t have some technology, then we be back where we were when we didn’t have any technology to begin with.

Back to books. It occurred to me that the way books are portrayed nowadays is “nerdy,” or “uncool,” so I talked to someone that has a lot of experience with kids who think the only way to be “cool” is to have lots of tech and not a lot of paper. His name is Dylan Kolb, and he is a sixth grade student at Roosevelt Middle School. I also talked to Brooke Kohnen, who is freshman here at Blaine. When I asked them both about the topic of books in general, I got two different reactions out of them. Dylan told me “books are fine, but they are kind of in the way all the time, and we have to read them for AR points,” which are points students get for reading a certain amount of books/pages in school, and taking a test, which is for reading comprehension. He also told me that “mostly, girls, and the non-sporty kids read a lot of books, even on a Kindle, not just paper ones. Me and my friends really only read when we have to because we want to skate, and play Xbox and stuff.” I thought this was pretty typical for an eleven year old, so I asked Brooke for her input on the book/reading situation, “I think books are great, and that kids think they are stupid just because they could possibly make you smarter, so they avoid them. The truth is, there are some pretty great pieces of literature, even if they are old. I think that if you constantly have your nose in a book, that’s a bit too much, but if you like to read, and have read some good books or literature i your life, then that’s cool!”

So I got two pretty different points on the book topic, and I think they both have pretty good points, so maybe the next time I second guess picking up a book because i’ll be deemed “uncool,” i’ll just read it, and keep in touch with the “olden days.”