CLICKING AND THINKING: CULTURE OF BOOK AND READING IN THE INTERNET AGE

Abstract

In this paper the author investigates the mission of book and reading, from sociological, cultural and epistemological point of view, in the Internet age. The starting point of the research is the idea about book as a micromodel of entire culture. All grand shifts of communication paradigms have been followed by sharp polemics of representatives of both old and new technologies. The author emphasizes that the libraries must maintain and transfer knowledge and information in different forms, and to different carriers, media and technologies, and at the same time preserve a relationship with a book as an incarnation and a symbol of culture. Electronic media will not destroy the civilization of a book. They will radically change a way in which people work and think, while, as the time passes, the new communication forms will offer possibilities for appropriate organizing and understanding the world in which we live. The conclusion highlights the necessity of implementation of integral information literacy in the sense to developof understanding of the quality of informational sources, critical and creative ability for transforming information into meanings, knowledge and ideas.