Interesting article in the Times on Sunday by Motoko Rich. "Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading? Is the Internet the enemy of reading, or has it created a new kind of reading, one that society should not discount?" Two people have already e-mailed it to me and it is one of the NYT's most e-mailed articles at the moment.
It describes the latest round of a debate that goes all the way back to Plato's Phaedrus. What is the impact of a new technology on how we learn and share information and knowledge? In Plato's case he was concerned, amongst other things, about the impact of literacy on a highly valued oral tradition. Now we are concerned about the impact of the web on literacy. Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose.
I think it is still important to learn to read, as Rich puts it, texts with "a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author’s vision." It is not so much the predetermined beginning, middle, and end that I value but the sustained concentration on another's vision and argument. Our attention spans and our willingness to engage with someone else's ideas for a sustained period seem to be shrinking. Reading online encourages us to take (an albeit false) sense of control and it also encourages to read in smaller chunks. Reading on the web is focused on self. We are able to construct narratives and arguments that satisfy us from many sources, rather than being forced to confront another author's vision.
What the web is good for though, amongst other things, is rewarding us for evaluating sources, and enabling us to evaluate arguments, authors, sources, etc. quickly.
So I think we need to learn to do both, just as memorizing a poem is also still a useful skill and accomplishment.
Just as Plato couldn't stop the shift from orality to literacy, we will not stop this shift from print to digital. How we store, learn, and share information and knowledge will change with this shift. We need to find ways to separate the elements and techniques of print culture that will be of continuing value from the simply familiar and comfortable. At the same time we have to consciously encourage the valuable elements and techniques of our evolving digital culture. Just as Cassiodorus did not sit back and watch the classical Roman culture of the scroll fade away during a period of massive economic and societal change, but worked to bring what he valued into the new technology of the codex and nascent medieval world and by doing so changed that future.
One thing struck me in the article, Nadia's mother worked hard to encourage her daughter to read but does not read much herself. That may be the key.
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Here you will find various musings of Jonathan Miller, the Director of the Olin Library at Rollins College, Winter Park, FL. It is particularly aimed at the Rollins community. Don't expect anything too in-depth or scholarly, after all, it's a blog.
3 comments:
"So I think we need to learn to do both, just as memorizing a poem is also still a useful skill and accomplishment."
Great post, Jonathan. My only concern relates to the parallel you make between "literary" or print reading and memorizing a poem. In my experience, that skill in this generation is basically nonexistent--save for the odd classic class on Latin Poetry. Still an accomplishment, but remarkably rare. As a hopeful novel writer and author one day and as a 21 year old who reads her news (NYTimes, NPR, BBC, The Economist etc.) exclusively online, what do you see as the fate of literary novels in this world? Will "Ebooks" have a cambrian explosion? Will the next iphone come with (and may already) an application to download books?
And (this is a point the article failed to mention) what's going to happen to all our young eyes--reading for so long from a screen? I've already had fits of eye strain this summer, just from NYTimes.com alone. Not something that would immediately come to mind, I know.
Fay -- I agree with your point that memorized poetry is basically nonexistent in this generation. I think this is a loss.
In general the balance between what we have memorized and what we choose to rely on external sources for has changed. Take phone numbers for example. How many have you memorized? How many do you have stored in your cell phone? Ask your parents how many they used to have memorized).
As for ebooks. I think two things are happening, first more and more book like texts are born digital or are being digitized. But at the same time the nature of the book is changing. What we would have distributed and generally recognized as a book in the past is perhaps now a database, includes multimedia, is hypertext, is distributed in smaller chunks, etc. Part of the problem here is definition. You write of "literary novels" and "books" as though they are synonymous. I try to think of the book as the actual technology of the codex, multiple pages fastened together on one side protected by a binding. But see the OED's entry on book for the full complexity of this issue.
Mobile technology will continue to have a huge impact on this. You can already read many texts/books on your iPhone, or use a dedicated device like Amazon's Kindle (try it, their screen technology may help your eye strain.) This will only increase but the printed codex still has advantages as a technology (cheap, robust, easily marked and notated, and once it is produced, carbon neutral). More importantly it has huge cultural stature. Books make us feel warm and fuzzy, they make great gifts, they ooze civilization, accomplishment and education. They will be around for the long time, certainly as containers for novels, high end non-fiction, and poetry.
That's great to hear (or read). Thanks, Jonathan. :)
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