Are We Forgetting How to Read Books?
- Andy McIlvain
- Apr 4
- 2 min read
Updated: Apr 5
Video from Alexander Arguelles
Are We Forgetting How to Read Books?
"In this video, I share some thoughts about the difficulty of immersing myself in a book the way I used to so enjoy doing." from the video introduction
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Are we forgetting how to read?
From stone tablet to Kindle, two surveys of the history of the book probe what comes next, in the era of e-readers and text-guzzling AI
"The book is one of the most treasured and defining products of civilisation. From priceless tomes of learning in the great libraries of the world to battered, much-loved paperbacks in beach bags or on our shelves, books are a familiar, vital and reassuring constant in a world abounding with distractions.
But what actually is a book? Since the Epic of Gilgamesh was first written down on clay tablets in Mesopotamia 4,000 years ago, it has been a mobile and ever-evolving technology. Papyrus scrolls gave way to the parchment codex; then, after Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type in the 15th century, transformed into the printed volume all of us are familiar with today.
That evolution continues. For decades now, books have also been found as electronic texts on e-readers and in multiple forms online. And yet technological expansion brings threats — most recently with the emergence of artificial intelligence, which leads some to sense that the age of the book, epitomised in the west by Gutenberg’s great advance in printing, is now in its death throes.
Two new titles explore the enduring legacy of Gutenberg’s innovative use of technology — and consider the parallels between the profound changes in communication it ushered in and the digital revolution that has engulfed society over the past three decades.
Jeff Jarvis’s The Gutenberg Parenthesis follows the development of printing and its impact on society right up to the present day. Meanwhile, in The Science of Reading, Adrian Johns focuses on the 19th- and 20th-century researchers who tried to understand what happens when we read the printed page. Can we understand the impact of digital technology on readers today through looking back at previous revolutions in communication technology?.." from the article: Are we forgetting how to read?
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