A recent article from The New Atlantis discusses the decline (by some accounts, utter disappearance) in the practice of reading books. This is a discussion (not a new one, of course) that makes me despair for the future of ideas, thought, discourse and, arguably, civilization. Not to sound like a grumbling 21st century Oswald Spengler, but the trend is alarming. There is, undeniably, a deep irony that my hand-wringing is being expressed on a blog…
This is an issue that has been discussed before. Perhaps it’s even become a trope. Regardless, it is a curious and unprecedented historical phenomena. The book has been a boon to thought, knowledge and ideas since the middle of the 15th century, and this 500-year tangent is being diverted by the new phenomena of electronic media in all forms. Many have speculated about this decline in literacy. What are its impacts on citizenship, politics, even notions of individuality? Who knows.
To bear witness to the transformation as an educator and a scholar is a curious thing. Powerless as a single individual to effect change in the flow away from books, one can only watch in a combination of sadness and amazement. This is no mere nostalgia, either. Something really will be lost, even if it is only the sense of the deep narrative of our culture or the capacity to follow and maintain complex arguments. Would be interesting to witness the transformation over a longer time frame. See the bigger picture. Will probably be a real page turner…
Article by way of Arts & Letters Daily.
January 17, 2009 at 1:57 pm |
Excellent find, thanks for this. I read somewhere recently that the brains of readers and non-readers develop differently.
I am afraid that this is going to increase the divide between the haves (have read, can think), and the have-nots (haven’t read, easily led)…
January 17, 2009 at 2:20 pm |
And here’s why…
New York Times link.
January 17, 2009 at 2:30 pm |
MB: Undoubtedly. The relationship between the reading brain and politics is clear. Literacy encourages independence of thought, individuality and criticality in the face of political ideologies and rhetoric. This is a given — a proven fact derived from any cursory investigation into the history of the book.
ricki: Hilarious. A wonderful bit of satire.
January 17, 2009 at 10:37 pm |
Stimulating article, thanks for the reference. But I have to respectfully disagree. There’s much to celebrate in our society’s innovations and people are smart creatures. It’s just that new generations aren’t always smart in the same way that older generations realize. For instance, per Plato, when books first came of use, many decried that they would replace citizens’ memory for older tales that were passed down orally. I think that the historical argument – eg, books have been around for so long, we’ve always done it this way – breaks down as well. Just apply it to other things over human history like fighting death and disease. Lastly people always move to new tech for a good reason; in the case of the net, we get more info storage, communication, processing capacity, and decentralization. It’s easy to decry young generations, but my worry is that it stems more from a distrust of the unfamiliar than from their inadequacies.
January 18, 2009 at 1:27 pm |
kerrjac: I totally understand your perspective. But the mere fact of your disagreement is a kind of print-based discourse. The collective hive-mind phenomena of the interwebs arguably discourages this. My criticism isn’t necessarily born of distrust — more a reflection of the transformations I’ve personally witnessed in my work in the university milieu.
Anyway, like I said, it would be fascinating to see the transformation take place. Just to observe the changes, on a social evolutionary level, over a longer timeframe…
January 26, 2009 at 9:38 pm |
Mmm, I have to respectfully disagree with the posit. I even have a wonderful example in my kids…
The eldest is a reader. Mostly light fiction, it is true, but somewhat voracious when he has time. He didn’t read much while in school, but as he’s moved through his third decade pleasure reading has taken up more and more of his free time, slowly cutting into his hunting, fishing, and beer drinking time away from his career as an ironworker.
The middle kid is a professional reader. He is currently at Princeton University on a full doctoral scholarship working in 16th century Syriac developing a dictionary/vocabulary and initial translations of original manuscripts. This degree will join his divinity, theoretical mathematics, English (drama), and c.sci. degrees. But he hasn’t time for any reading on his own time other than internet communications.
The last kid was a major book reader, but now goes months between cracking a cover beyond his secondary school textbooks. Unless it’s a skate/snowboard magazine, or a website, or a text chat, he doesn’t read. But among the websites he visits regularly are literary communities, news sites, and museums. He has bookmarked almost every court case involving graffiti artists in BC, and can rattle off detailed analyses of brands and lines of spray paint. On weekends he may spend as much 6 hours a day researching topics via the internet – reading. Of them all, I’d guess he is the one who on his own time reads the most, both in number of hours and in quantity of material.
What I hope you’ve noted is that each has varied their interactions with books over their lives, as I too have done. Publishers now produce more unique titles, and more printed texts, than ever before in history and yet continue to accelerate. In a world where there are now more *native* speakers of Latin, Welsh, and Scotts Gaelic than in the previous two centuries, I think we should consider the New Atlantic article for what it is – baseless fear-mongering.
January 27, 2009 at 9:08 am |
amgine: Not to quibble, but clearly your children are exceptional. And not a representative sample. Sounds like they have wonderful gifts, both in terms of nature and nurture. As a university professor, I tend to see a broader sample of the younger generation, and all is no always so good. There are talented, driven and curious folks, sure. But again, even university students are giving insight from a particular and privileged group…Outside of this framework, and in certain social contexts, reading is a long dead art…
January 29, 2009 at 8:23 pm |
Well, if that were the case then publishing would be a dead-end investment; there’d be fewer and fewer publishers, fewer titles, fewer periodicals. And the reality is precisely the opposite. And the market range is expanding: there are still cheap paperbacks available for even a smaller percentage of the average hourly wage, and the upper end for professional references is regularly punching through to 4 figures.
If my blue-collar union kid, academic kid, and skater kid are so exceptional, what is an unexceptional kid? I mean, my partner (research professor) studies BC adolescents, and she finds that most homeless kids in the most tenuous of housing are attending school – to me that’s exceptional, and I can understand why they might not be big readers. But I spend time with a few thousand friends on IRC who are mostly <25 yo, and all working on our spare time on community projects such as http://en.wiktionary.org. These kids are readers.
Maybe the sky isn’t falling? maybe we should take a second look after checking some of our assumptions.
January 30, 2009 at 7:23 pm |
amgine: The sky may not be falling, but it is going digital. Maybe reading isn’t in total decline (though I wonder…), but the way people read is certainly changing. Witness the closing of one of the last independent book store on Charing Cross Road just this week. Reading on the net is another kind of activity, arguably very different from the deep immersion one gets from printed sources…
January 30, 2009 at 8:36 pm |
Mmm, yes… I patronize several independent bookstores here in Vancouver in part because I’m afraid that rising rents are going to doom them. White Dwarf and Dead Write Books on 10th, and the QuarterDeck on Granville Island (less a bookstore and more a nautical gift shop.) But, through online sources like Amazon and the big box bookstores, people really are reading more books than ever before.
Plus there is the entire used trade, including eBay booksellers. You’re admirably situated near Sidney and Victoria to see and access the dozens of resellers on the south-island. There’s a chain in Victoria where I’ve spent hundreds collecting old Pilot books and nautical tomes. In my own way I dabble in the currents and winds of time; something I could never have indulged prior to the internet’s common-law marriage with commerce.
My opinion is society is more fractured, that we are each able to indulge our ever-more narrow interests in a firehose of content – be it print or digital media – which insulates from our fellow readers. It’s not that we are reading less, it’s that we are reading less in common.
January 31, 2009 at 11:06 am |
The bookstore culture in Victoria is awesome, though I’m actually not there at the moment. My current locale is suffering on that front, as I wrote in a post last fall.
What you say about the isolation and fracturing is interesting. Makes me think of the explosion in reading and literary culture that came about in the 18th century. What thinkers like Habermas call the “public sphere”. I wonder how vital and dynamic this kind of interaction is now. Seems reduced, in many cases, to bemoaning its own decline, as witnessed by the article that sparked this whole discussion.
Then again, we have just reproduced a fairly interesting dialogue about the issue in a virtual vein…