Anarcissie: “Remember when television was going to end reading?” I think that though it didn’t end reading it gave it a body-blow that we haven’t recovered from. The majority of Americans, statisticians say, watch TV for four hours per day. TV-watching is mostly (though not always) intellectually passive whereas reading a book or a newspaper is mostly intellectually active. TV hasn’t done much for tv-raised kids IQs, ambitions and attention spans, while distorting the world by focusing on virtual reality rather than reality.

It just doesn’t seem the same sitting down and attempting to read a “book” online. Sure we’re reading the same words as we might when we have an actual book in our hands but it just doesn’t give me the same satisfaction.

The fact that I am tied to exactly the same postion certainly doesn’t help either. We all spend so much time with our laptops, Blackberrys and iPods surely we can spare some down time with a good old-fashioned book.

It’s a similar situation with the move away from natural grass with more and more people replacing it with artificial turf. Rather than hearing the sound of lawnmowers on a heady summer evening we’re getting the chance to watch people conduct a stringent bout of artificial turf maintenance. Where will it all end?

Are we too wired to read? Probably, if you’re talking about books that demand suspension of whatever is going on around you, in your life ... suspension, anyway, long enough to let you take a long walk in the different world created by some brilliant author’s mind.

I’ve read (and written and edited) a lot all my life—for money, for politics, but mostly for sheer pleasure as well as learning. When I realized that the Net had interfered with my long reading and imaginary sallies into other worlds, it was obvious that some part of me had gone missing, and only I could get it back.

So I’m reading more literature, for longer periods, again (political and issue-oriented books don’t count)and am noticing that I seem to be appreciating the physical world more, perhaps coincidentally, perhaps as a result. Some of my friends and I have stopped using only email and use the phone instead—even a few words long-distance make the connection more real, and we’re supplementing these with hand-written letters. (The feeling that you are carving words in stone tediously passes.)

So many of the great used book stores in San Francisco have gone under—Acorn is especially missed—but Green Apple is still there, and new-book Borders sometimes has sales. I love Amazon, and use it but only if I can’t find what I’m looking for at a realistically low price.

Feel calmer, the book I’m writing is flowing better, and my dreams are more interesting. My husband is highly computer literate but, haing never given up his voracious book-reading habit, keeps looking at me in a sneaky “Told you so.” way.

Howie, I certainly agree with your observation;  but I think the blame has as much to do with the deteriorating quality of editing as it has to do with the writers.  I know enough about both to feel strongly that self-editing just does not cut it;  or, as I put it on my blog, “self-editing reminds me of Abraham Lincoln’s joke about the man who acts as his own lawyer having a fool for a client.”

http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2009/07/internet-news.html

This is not just a matter of spelling and grammar.  Often it comes down to faulty logic concealed by sloppy rhetoric.  As to your conclusion, I think it comes down to the fact that it is easier to obey the CAVEAT LECTOR rule (cited in the above URL) on the Internet than when watching television!

The premise that the Internet or digital text in general causes people to read less or degrades reading skills is ridiculous. The reality is quite the opposite.  We are reading and writing far more often these days (blogs, emails, etc) in place of verbal communications, and not just in the dry, emotionless context of academic and business writing.  With the capacity for instant spell-checking (we quickly become aware of our errors and the proper way to correct them)  and access to instant definition-checking and contextual research of words or phrases we are unfamiliar with, it is probably the single biggest contribution to reading comprehension and vocabulary that has ever happened. The internet is almost certainly making us a more literate society, and some searches on the subject will reveal that many educators agree.

Of course, we are still likely to hear lamentation from career journalists and authors once had a more exclusive hold on written media. They have now have intellectual competition from anyone with access to a computer and the will to express themselves through written word, without any need for an editor’s approval or the financial support of a corporate publisher.

In the ATLANTIC MONTHLY Nicholas Carr suggested that Google was “making us stupid” by eroding our capacity for sustained (and contemplative) reading.  However, I have argued elsewhere that such capacity may also be eroded by a decrease in quality reading matter that stimulates such contemplative practices:

http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2009/05/on-long-tail-of-satellite-radio.html

I would humbly suggest that, compared with Carr’s essay, Ulin’s rambling (if not self-indulgent) piece supports my point!  Fortunately, I never seem to have any trouble finding more substantive reading matter;  and I do not feel as if my own capacity for reading is being eroded!

I read books all the time.  The Internet has proven to be a great treasure: there is endless stuff to read on it, and if you insist on paper, you can download books, often for free, and print them—obscure things you would be unlikely to find in a bookstore.  My guess is that the Internet and the various electronic devices we attach to it will greatly increase reading, and, even among non-readers, reading skills, since to get to the other stuff you generally need to be able to read.  And it will increase discussion of, and thereby attention to, what is read.

Remember when television was going to end reading?

You wanna hear about wired? Our 11 year old admitted upon my questioning that she reads the same books over and over that she has read the complete set of Harry Potter 28 TIMES? Now that is wired!! I bought her “Holes” today,,,,,,,

People are reading on the internet and still using books.  I can’t use books on paper (due allergy).
People said kids would stop learning when computers came out - nah.  Books are great and I miss holding one, but one does with what one has access to…

I also remember when it was said that men don’t like
to read.  I have known men who are readers of books.

A related issue is how the Internet is affecting the reading skills of the young. I find many students now scan articles and rely on “bells and whistles” to fill in the blanks. Without the latter to assist in their comprehension, many become poor readers.

I’m grateful to my mother for turning off the TV and driving me regularly to the public library.

“This is where real reading comes in—because it demands that space, because by drawing us back from the present, it restores time to us in a fundamental way.”

I love to read, and I was lucky, I took to reading at a young age, and it was easy for me. As a young person, I practically lived at the library in my hometown of Red Oak, Iowa. At the library, I could read anything I wanted to read, including the plays of Tennessee Williams and the works of other great writers, and I savored their prose and poetry. Yes, I escaped, but I also learned and made connections that I otherwise would not have recognized from the past to what was then the present.

In today’s world, sometimes, it’s difficult to find the time, but if I lose contact with books and reading, I find myself on edge, and eventually, I retreat, for a couple of days, reading until I have filled the well, so to speak.

Are We Too Wired to Read?

Yes. Next question.