For my Writing about Literature in the Digital Age class, we are reading the book, Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge. One of the requirements for this class is to experience one of the required books in a digital format. I decided to listen to Rainbows End on audiobook. (I also acquired one of the other required texts on audiobook, The Case for Books.) I have only listened to one other audiobook in my life, but it was simply for entertainment purposes. A whole new experience takes place when you are searching academically for information within a text. I am someone who is a visual learner, so as you can imagine, I like to feel the paper in my hand and view the words upon the physical page. With audiobooks, elements of the reading experience are lost. You cannot see the words upon the page, so how names are spelled is non-existent. It is more difficult to look back to a certain part in the text to review what you read. As a reader, I have also found it more difficult to keep track of characters and follow the storyline.
On the other hand, I have discovered that my mind is slowly learning how to focus while listening to Rainbows End, so that I can collect the needed information. I do not know if I think that audiobooks will ever be able to take the place of physical books in their ability to help human beings process combinations of words into functional ideas, but hopefully like Miri says on page forty-six of Rainbows End, "With some practice, you should be able to see and hear as good as anyone."
I'm listening to the Vinge book audio style as well and have encountered similar challenges. I find for this book, because we won't be tested on it and just need to get the gist - the plot, characters, and themes, I find the format convenient because I can work on other things while I listen... it keeps my hands free even if my mind has to focus on the text. However, if I were reading something that I didn't just have to understand basically, I would not use the audio format.
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