Guided Reading Activity the Enlightenment and Revolutions Lesson 1 Answers

How technology is creating a reading revolution

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Reading has truly seen a big change in the last few years. With high-definition video, hyper-real video games, and high-quality audio so readily available, it is a little counter-intuitive that boring old books, and the technology behind them, are still going from strength to strength. Really, there has never been a better moment in history if you like reading books.

The technology of reading can't be discussed without bringing up electronic paper. The technology that drives the Kindle and the Pebble has made low-power and long-lasting dynamic reading devices possible. Not only can electronic paper (e-ink) devices be used in direct sunlight without having glare issues, it also has the benefit of only needing to draw power when the display updates. Just like its printed counterpart, an e-ink page draws no power, so it can be left on all of the time.

At the same time, more traditional backlit displays are getting much better for reading. The incredibly high-res displays in the iPad , Kindle Fire HD, and recently-announced Nexus 10 allow for images to be displayed at such a high resolution that the human eye cannot distinguish individual pixels. That's what Apple calls "Retina." Even phones have become good reading devices, now that squinting and zooming is no longer needed to make out a paragraph. These high-quality screens are making huge steps forward in readability, and it is forcing the traditionally low-res computer monitors to get their acts together.

It's not all about hardware, though. Content availability and pricing are a huge factor in this reading renaissance. Places like Project Gutenberg, Google Books, and the Internet Archive are offering countless public domain and creative commons books. The Amazons, Googles, and Apples of the world are offering new e-books in the eight to fifteen dollar range. Now that WiFi and cellular have proliferated North America and Europe so heavily, you can download a new book virtually anywhere you go in highly populated areas. Even if your connection is spotty, flash storage allows us to have entire libraries with us at all times. This truly is a revolution.

This is a boon for most of us, but what about people with disabilities? Recent technology has probably changed the most in the area of reading for the disabled. Built into every Mac, iOS, and Windows device is a text-to-speech engine, so that simply selecting text will allow the user to play it back out loud. The wonderful OpenDyslexic font might look strange at first sight, but it's designed so that people with dyslexia can more easily read text. Apps like Instapaper are already including it. Audiobooks, once something very pricey and inconvenient, are now affordable and easy. Audible and iTunes are both great places to get high quality audiobook content that will play on pretty much any device you want. Digital distribution and the proliferation of computers and smartphones have made reading much more accessible to the visually impaired, and that is something for the industry to be very proud of.

Reading has never been easier, and we keep seeing breakthroughs every year. Without a doubt, we have the capacity to be the most well-read generation in history.

Now read: The birth of the Kindle Fire and the death of the public library

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Guided Reading Activity the Enlightenment and Revolutions Lesson 1 Answers

Source: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/139052-how-technology-is-creating-a-reading-revolution

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