[/caption]... and I'd like not to be worried. After all, for me, the smell of a Barnes & Noble is nearly aphrodisiac, and I consider the buying, reading and piling up of books and magazines my birthright. I confess to not having a Kindle or similar device yet, but I know that's coming. To me, format matters, but content matters more. That's why I found Fortune's cover story The Future of Reading particularly thought-provoking. I can't believe it... could it even be possible... that people will ever lose interest completely in reading? Let it not be so.
Fortune, of course, is speaking largely from a business perspective, especially regarding journalistic concerns. I noticed that I couldn't find the text of that March 1 lead article, which I first devoured in print while waiting at my allergist's office, online as I wrote this – since it's this week's issue, Fortune would no doubt like us to buy the magazine and thus support the advertising. I certainly understand this. After all, a great deal of vSA's work is in public relations, media relations in particular. If there is no revenue, there will be no publications. Plain and simple. Fortune, and even Broom, Brush & Mop magazine - difficult as it is to believe – are not mere labors of love.
Here's my educated guess, based on the cosmic and not-so-cosmic shifts I've seen in my decades on this earth and at my desk (including the door-on-file-cabinets that served as my vSA desk in those first daring years of entrepreneurship): Reading will not die. The stature of Amazon and my beloved Barnes & Noble are evidence to that. Sadly, small bookstores and publications large and small have suffered and will continue to do so. The media will continue to adapt, with false starts and many casualties, to new models for advertising and other revenue generation. More and more of our reading will be done on notepads and online. People will continue to love video in all its forms, and many – okay, most – will prefer it to the written word.
But there is a magnetism to writing and to reading, and, despite the challenges of doing it well, there is a certain simplicity and joy to creating stories – just think, most children compose tales and essays as soon as they can wield a crayon or navigate a keyboard. We love our news (both the important and the supremely trivial) and we relish our rehashing of information, much of which will continue to be in the form of articles, opinions and other text.
Fortune, by the way, agrees, by and large: Reading – somehow, someway – will live on. What's your take?
I agree, Michele, about the amazing thing literacy is. But, then, I am literate. Do those less literate envy the literate... or like the last ten years or so, criticize intellectual capacity and pursuits from the political arena? I mean, W was hardly the choice of academics - both times.
ReplyDeleteI can't help but wonder if H.G. Wells has it right in his classic "The Time Machine" where the beautiful Eloi are well cared for, and dumb as posts... and are food for the scary, but educated, Morlocks below.
I have heard from many sources that the highest historical penetration of literacy world wide, was about 1905, give or take. Well before radio, and much before television and so on.
There's no doubt that instantaneous communication via current wired and wireless telcom has advantages, but as anything we humans are capable of, all this advantage has been weighed down by a fair chunk of mean, useless effluent. Everyone can sell anything, and everyone can hurl their opinion. This can be good for society, when (like any good debating class) points are clearly defined and defended, but rarely is this the case and online experiences often seem yet another mirror of the sordid plight humanity seems to create for itself in every age.
We are soft, very soft. As a society, we generally seem more inclined to kick back with a cold one and a bag of processed salt, sugar and fat; tune in and tune out. Pleasure, no matter how small and fleeting, with the least amount of effort.
The idea of delving into books, especially non fiction, for so many must seem like work. I just completed "Freakomics" and "Super Freakonomics", and before these, "Atom: A Single Oxygen Atom’s Journey" and "A Brief History of Nearly Everything". Next up is "Into the Wild". After that, I anticipate a hearty return to non fiction, perhaps re-reading Heinlein's "Job: A Comedy of Justice." It was Heinlein who said, "A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity." Literacy is the foundation of confidence which is why it's astounding that more people do not read voraciously.
Respectfully submitted.
Great comment, Peter! I agree that competence and self-confidence reduce jealousy - and that, for that and other reasons that you state, knowledge is indeed a powerful thing.
ReplyDeleteMichelle