The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age

Why write essays online like this? The truth is most people wake up and the first thing they do is look at their phone and read. What they read is not a book. Neither fiction nor nonfiction tomes, nor poetry nor autobiography, no, nothing like that at all. They’ll read social media posts, they’ll read news articles, their emails, sports summaries, ... See more

One thing I’ve also noticed is the gradual loss of the understanding of “imagination” as a category; it can sound a little Reading Rainbow to talk about, but wouldn’t you know imagination is actually an essential part of the human condition. In so far as the words “spirit” or “spirituality” mean anything beyond woo-woo or cliché they must include t... See more

Major new mediums change the structure of discourse. Books demand that you sit still and pay attention for long periods. Television’s demands on you are much different.

It’s critically important to note that nobody I spoke with was against digital. That is, nobody was enraged. Digital books simply didn’t make sense to many of these folks on a wholistic or gut level. To dedicate yourself to a book is to want to form a relationship, and the strictures and webbing of the digital book world seemed to do everything to ... See more