The Downfall of Reading
April 3, 2008 – 8:10 pm by BHWords of wisdom (HT):
People assume that if you’re not actually sitting with a book in your lap, you’re not really reading. Whereas most of what people are doing online is reading. Sending text messages or sitting with a magazine or a comic is reading. There are all kinds of reading, and I think book-boostering campaigns are a reaction against these things that compete for our attention. People feel anxious about the demise of reading, but those anxieties are groundless, and perhaps rooted in snobbery.
That’s Mikita Brottman. Read the full interview on Nerve. I always find it interesting to see what Tyler Cowen is reading, since it is usually five or six books at once, and he gets through them quicker than most people read a magazine. By contrast, when I go over to Greg Mankiw’s blog, I notice that when he links to something he is reading, it is invariably a journal article. While he no doubt reads books as well, there are many fields in academia where the most important works are articles and not books, so I see no problem with not reading a book. The point is simply that learning is still taking place. In the end that’s what matters.
