What we think of TV, books, and the Internet

Chris Summers and Karen De Jong , Contributors, Bogor, Central Java

If you were to look for the perfect form of entertainment and education, what would you choose? Television, the Internet, or books? It seems the answer really depends on who and where you are.

An octogenarian living in the city may well prefer to visit the local library but a teenager living, say, in the remote outback of Australia may have no choice but to rely on TV and the Internet. And chances are, being a member of the MTV generation, she may much prefer text on the screen to text on paper.

Television is very good for entertainment and can provide good background educational value, however, it is a passive experience -- you cannot find what you want when you want it.

"TV helps grow your imagination as far as you control the use of it, but if you are a TV addict then trouble will start to appear. TV is like any drug, too much is bad," said Edmond Dounias, an anthropologist from the Center for International Forestry Research in Bogor.

Even with dozens of channels on cable television, there are merely a few thousand choices within a week compared to the Internet's millions of choices at anytime of the day.

Books handed out by teachers provide a structured form of access to information and learning. This is efficient but there's not much opportunity for exploration.

Most teenagers now think that books are dull.

"Books are boring, unattractive. When I read a book it's whenever my mom or my teacher tells me to. I always fall asleep or look for something more active to do," says 14-year-old Grant, a student at the International School.

However, Dounias said teenagers who think books are boring "were not offered the chance to read a lot when they started learning reading, so it is very important to encourage parents to read to their little kids so they form an attraction for books when they are older".

In contrast, even a small library in a school provides opportunity for researching a subject from different perspectives. The city and university libraries around the world provide a huge amount of information, but you need to be there and have a lot of time to look for it.

Ideally, you would like to search quickly for information, be able to take it with you and not be hassled by having to carry heavy books. You would want all these things to be achieved with minimal costs and delay. In our modern age, the Internet fits this need almost perfectly.

We all know you can find a vast range of information choices over the Internet. You could find as much information with the click of a button, as it would take you weeks, or even years of searching in libraries.

"I don't read books much because I don't have the time. I'd rather use the Internet (because it) is much faster" said 13-year-old Pelia from Jakarta's Cita Buana School.

What the Internet tends to lack is the depth of material and even the amount of graphical information that you can find in good books. This is particularly so for material that has been published in the past.

But for the most recent cutting edge information, the material available on the Internet is as good as or better than the paper publications that come out months later.

This is because there is strong demand for current and topical information. And through the marvels of modern-day digital technology, this information is made easily available on the Internet and at high speed with low cost.

In contrast, it is still comparatively expensive to digitize already printed books and graphics in order to store and transmit them on the Internet.

As storage costs fall, and Internet bandwidth grows, the demand and supply for the Internet will increase. That's where the future is, and teenagers, familiar with navigating the Internet superhighway, are already halfway there.

-- Both writers are students at The International School of Bogor in Bogor, West Java.