To me, there’s nothing more satisfying than cracking open the binding of a fresh book. You have to use your physical senses and make the literature a part of you in order to read it.

Naturally, you pick up a book because you saw it and were interested in the visual. As you continue on, you’re able to smell the ink-laden words spilling through the whitespace. You feel the paper texture on your fingertips while thumbing the corners. And you listen to the crinkly sound it makes when you flip from page to page.

You can also lick the paper if that suits your style, although I wouldn’t recommend that, because of the risk of ending up with a black-tinted, paper-cut tongue. But, hey, who am I to tell you no? After all, it is your reading experience.

Now, that experience is what our generation and back go through when desiring a good or intellectual read. But the rising generation and the socially innovated minds of past generations developed a new reading familiarity consisting of a few deep physical senses and an electrical outlet.

Not an ideal situation to those diehard readers, but it’s the future, no? With Kindles and iPads fading into the ever-present background of our daily lives while newspapers and magazines offer content, and often whole issues, online.

It’s convenient, cheap, widespread and just easy, but where’s the emotion scanning an LED screen of air? There’s no physical printed word that you have in front of you. It’s merely an illusion of a newspaper or novel that brightly flashes and pans across the web page.

Still, it is the future.

I meet people on a daily basis who ask me what I do or what I want to do on my career path. I mention that while I sometimes consider law school, I’m a studying journalist who would love to write fiction eventually. While statistics are often misleading, I must say that 99.2 percent of the time the person responds with “Hmm. You know the printed press is dying. Thank heavens for the Internet” or some variation.

That, of course, is the kind of encouragement every prospective career girl (or boy) wants to hear. “You’re wasting your time, kiddo, on what you love and loved as a child. Better make sure you know how to roll with the punches.” Awesome times, y’all.

Change is the only constant we have. Rolling with the punches that come along with that change is necessary in every aspect of our lives. At the same time, however, not all punches lead to the winner’s circle.

When can we take solace in how far we’ve come? New technology and better resources are guaranteed products of industry and moving forward. But with all due respect for the innovators, I’d rather not have to literally scan into my brain a copy of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” And I’d prefer not to be marked and monitored through or in respect to what I read and write down.

Through the slogan, “Big Brother is watching you,” George Orwell fueled that fear when he, in 1949, provided us with an idea of what could happen if technology and innovation goes too far.

I’m not saying that the time of the Internet and online reading is bad. And I know that there are several people who disagree with my thoughts on the matter. But if we forget how we got here, then I can almost guarantee that it will get out of hand.

I opened a book today. Not a tab. Not a new window. But a book.

Will you?

Debra Flax is a sophomore majoring in journalism. Her column runs on Thursdays.