My survey!

I created a survey in surveymonkey.com in order to get some responses that I was interested in. Even though I posted it in many social networks such as tweeter, facebook, tuenti, yahoo answers and the good ereader, I didn't get as much responses as I expected.


I also have to mention that once collected the results, I realised that some of the questions like "what do you like to read most?" weren't relevant for my field of research.


The first chart on the right respond to the question "how old are you?", the one at the bottom right corner responds to "what do you think is more ecologically friendly, ebooks or paper books?". The first one on the left is "what do you like reading most?" and the one at the left bottom corner is "how many books do you read a year?"

The last question of my survey was: Do you prefer to read a paper book or an ebook? 
(this are some of the responses that I got)




-a book because of the feeling, but i prefer the ebook if the book I want to read is to heavy for me to carry it around

-I would prefer using eBooks (ink based ebooks, such as Kindle) for reading because they are more convenient to carry around. They are generally small and light and can store multiple books thus eliminating the need to worry about extra added weight. However, reading paper books seems more natural. :)

-paper book because we can read it everywhere, we can also read with an ipad or something like that but we have to be careful on the device. So I prefer textbook.

-A paper book! I like to feel the weigth of the book in my hands, and also turning the page. An ebook is cold, paper is warmer.

-A paper book, but then again, I have never tried reading from an ebook. I just like to have a hard copy, which I can make notes on, fold pages. If given something digitally I tend to print it off before reading.

-I prefer to read a paper book, it's just easier, you can open & close it freely, a paper book doesn't need charging, nobody's likely to steal a paper book as well

WHENEVER & WHEREVER

When I talk about the new readers generation I mean all these people that as I said in previous posts read electronically. There are many good reasons to read from a screen. One of them is internet, it is huge the amount of written data that we get from and through internet as a routine.  See for example e-mails, web journals or magazines, electronic books or any kind of written document really. This lately phenomena happens out of the benefits that internet leads us when it comes to getting any kind of data almost whenever and wherever we want it.  Meaning that when a nowadays student needs to get done some course work, will find the brief in the university website.  If you happened to want to read Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen when you are waiting for the bus, you can just download it from the internet and start reading it in less than five minutes.

Another of the greatest advantages of this “electronic reading” is the weight and space saving. With this I am referring to that big shelf filled with books that good readers have. This shelf isn’t a problem for settled people. But in the last 15 years the fact of moving around the world has become easier and this is generating a generation of nomads. For this nomads is way more comfortable to carry just one light and little device that can fit all their books in it. 

This is what THEY say

I signed up into yahoo answers and I found this relevant question that someone else made along with a great answer from another participant of the network:

I also made my own question getting some very useful responses, I post here all my questions with the best responses:

Digital Books or Paper Books?????

Ebooks Vs. Paper Books , this is a very controversial discuss with two well differenced sides. we have the romantic side, which prefer paper books, and the innovator side, pro ereaders. In this link above I found very well explained some pros and cons of both items. 

MY NETWORK DIAGRAM

This is the diagram I made of my personal connection with people. I ordered them from places I have lived. 

Weak & Strong Ties

I retained something that my lecturer mention today that I found especially interesting. This matter was weak and strong ties within a network. I looked at Raymond's Trend forecasters handbook but I wasn't completely satisfied with his explanation of the subject. So I kept researching about it a bit more and I found this clearer vision of weak and strong ties.

"In Mark Granovetter's social world, our close friends are often friends with each other as well. The network behind such a clustered society consists of small, fully connected circles of friends connected by strong ties, shown as blod lines. Weak ties, shown as thin lines, connect the members of these friendship circles to their acquaintances, who have strong ties to their own friends. Weak ties play an important role in any number of social activities, from spreading rumors to getting a job." 

(Barabasi, A.L. (2002) Linked: The New Science of Networks. Plume: Penguin Group)

I have been thinking about it and I came out with the conclusion that for my own network is going to be much better to use weak ties. Because I am interested in getting as many different opinions as posible. 

PERSONAL NETWORKS

A few days ago we were told in one of this module lectures to visualize our own network. So we all tried to draw a diagram of it in a piece of paper. (Later today I will be posting and Illustrator version of mine) This matter reminded me of something very similar that I had seen in Raymond's Trend Forecaster's Handbook, "The Friend Wheel". It is an application developed for Facebook and Tweeter by Thomas Fletcher, this app basically connects all your Facebook/Tweeter friends to each other in a coloured wheel. I tried use it and make my own friends connections wheel, but seams to be having some problems to generate new ones, so I will just post a screen-shot from someone else's wheel that I found on the internet.

NETWORK = CONNECTIONS/LINKS

What is good about networks is that we get to know about people thoughts way more than "in real life". Lets for example look at facebook. We can see all this information about what loads of people (that allow us to see their profile) post, that otherwise we could have never knew. Things such as pictures of the summer vacations of someone that I met in a party, or maybe I could discover that someone I know is a great writer because they published their blog site. Networks give us the opportunity to get in touch with interesting matters and people very easily. That makes researching much simple.

Fine. So how can I use a network as a research tool? What kind of information can I get from it?
As I wrote in my last post, information on the internet is not always reliable. What it is reliable and extremely useful is the fact that because anyone can write, anyone can give an opinion or expres a feeling. about something.

I post therefore I am

Yes... I know I should have being posting every day so I get used to it and I do it as a habit blah blah blah...  But I was looking for the motivation to be dropped down from the sky just like doughnuts or something. It didn't. So now I find my self writing at almost 3am trying to find that motivation by my self. Lets start.




"The network is the dominant culture ideology" ok... Singers create new singles based on fan's opinions/petitions on their web sides, politicians check Tweeter for feedback from the population, designers rely some of their advertising to not necessarily profesional people that have many followers in their blogs . Apparently if nowadays our ideas aren't posted somewhere on the internet they "don't exit". Therefore if we intent to be known for our interest, work, ideas we see our selfs in the need of getting them online exposing our thoughts.

Lately anyone can write about anything and they will be published, because we can actually publish whatever we want for free! This can be extremely useful sometimes but because anyone can do it, how can we decide which of that information is reliable???

"The network is the dominant culture ideology"

(Vanelis)