The pursuit of knowledge has transformed humanity. Historians have identified Mesopotamia as the first region where a class of people dedicated themselves entirely to the pursuit of knowledge. Once food production increased reasonably in most cultures, the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake would become a dominant preoccupation. The complexity of nature, its beauty, and grandeur inspired the desire to know more. However, in the course of learning, an epistemological shift happens occasionally over time. The shift is the complete transformation of how individuals take knowledge. When the shift occurs, the impacts are profound and far-reaching.
For philosophers, all epistemological shifts are a cause of concern, even if they are positive. The reason is that shifts affect the lives of individuals. Knowledge itself is responsible for directing human action; hence, the reason people spend years in school. The objective is not just to know some random facts, but actively provide a template for a vibrant and reflective living (Yaden, Rowe & MacGillivray, 2014). In America, the hope has always been that an educated person will take up their civic duties seriously, and in doing so, support democracy and its attendant values.
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Given the importance of knowledge and human action, a change in the conferment of knowledge is essential. In the last decade or so, electronic books have become increasingly common. Within the same time, libraries with traditional printed books have recorded a decrease in traffic. The implication is that people are using e-books more than printed books. Most universities now have libraries containing only e-books, and in cases where the schools do not have such books, they have signed up with digital libraries for their students to access e-books free or at a fee (Yaden, Rowe & MacGillivray, 2014). Moreover, in addition to e-books, there are tons of information freely available on the web, and all contain relevant information to some degree. Smart students are putting this massive pool of knowledge to good use in their studies.
E-books have introduced a new epistemology on literacy. The e-books are their rhetorical tools with inherent ideology. Philosophers have identified three ways in which society changes viz. The shift in what the society focuses its attention to, changes in the relevance of interpersonal needs, and changes in the perception of the power structure (Cline, 2012). The e-books have introduced a shift in the attention of humanity, and the other changes will come as well. Human thought is tied to language, and e-books are media through which language is processed.
Consequently, e-books are changing how people think. By extension, that means that the process of knowledge creation itself is changing with the rise of e-book. E-books have introduced the idea of hypertexuality, where every statement is verifiable immediately by following a link. The sources cited, as well as footnotes are easy to verify by clicking a few links. Thus, the epistemology of the reader with the e-books is that of skepticism until verification.
The epistemological shift is mostly positive. The invention of the printing machines was perhaps the last major shift in this regard. It made the written material available to more people, boosting literacy. The power of knowledge creation expanded, paving the way for modernity. With the eBook, knowledge creation is faster due to greater access to a variety of written materials. However, on the other side, the increase in the array of sources of information, as in the case of the e-books and online articles, does not necessarily translate into quality materials or knowledge (Cline, 2012). There is a lot of misleading information online. The epistemological shift, therefore, has the potential to improve things for the better or worse, things mostly because algorithms with inherent bias mediate the process of discovery of new reading materials.
References
Cline, J. (2012). The Future of Reading/Thinking: Epistemological Construction in the Age of the Kindle. Communication +1: Vol. 1: Iss. 1, Article 2 . Retrieved https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cpo/vol1/iss1/2
Yaden, D., Rowe, D., & MacGillivray, L. (2014). Emergent Literacy: A Matter (Polyphony) of Perspectives. In Handbook of Reading Research . doi:10.4324/9781410605023.ch25
