Is the art of reading a book lost?

Café
#21

I never graduated from high school, being a young idiot! But was drafted into the US Army, ending up with eight years of military computer and programming experience - which did not matter at all to non-military based companies.

At great hardship and expense, doing four+ years at Dartmouth - not learning all that much more than I already knew (back then, the academic viewpoint of establishing a career in computer science was being an educator - heavily opposed to working in the ‘commercial’ workforce).

But was in the early 70’s - I was unusual, being ten years older than most students; with my wife, kids, and responsibilities - did not enjoy the college experience at all. Dartmouth did not even allow women on campus! Instead had a ‘sister’ college - Colby - which is trying to ‘re-brand’ itself today.

Guess am kind of bitter now - being part of that, I only did it to get that all important tag on my resume as an ivy league ‘Dartmouth’ graduate - to get an interview with the big players in the computer industry at the time. - Is kinda like owning the latest and greatest cell phone. Seems compliant, weak, and silly now.

Later, the internet gave me the resources to expand my knowledge. That knowledge gave me a good living, and like to think I somewhat advanced technology as we see it today - the good, bad and ugly. Was not from my education - but from my desire to learn.

Regardless of your education, medals, awards, achievements and even your current cell phone; doesn’t matter. Is the desire to learn. The most brilliant software developer I have ever met has no interest. A passion for Zoology of all things. Go figure.

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#22

I don’t think the art of reading a book is lost. just changed, or become a personal choice rather than the only available method. Perhaps even diversified. Other arts of reading are now available.

  • let us keep in mind in many cases even the printed book goes through an electronic phase in writing and or production.
  • The book can become a podcast, e-book or printed and perhaps in time a pseudo-physical item in a virtual environment.
  • The Vinyl record (cinema, radio station) has not died, only gotten a little more niche, the same is occurring with books.

With these diverse choices we learn new things such as browsing vs Grazing. We use browsers Browsing (herbivory) - Wikipedia but perhaps books/ebooks are Grazing - Wikipedia or it depends on how you hold it.

There is an argument that physical books are a more reliable and resilient media in the case of a tech apocalypse or a simple loss of celular internet in your holiday cabin, perhaps even a loss of power. This is as a result now a risk management approach.

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#23

Agree though…

My library of hardcover books has been greatly reduced. I used to have sets of reference materials; programming languages, encyclopedias - packing and lugging all of that around was a struggle, not to mention the expense of keeping up-to-date.

So my digital library has way more books than my hardcover library. There are still some mainstays - a household bathroom is not complete without a Reader’s Digest and Farmers Almanac. Got to have something to read while on the throne :wink:

Find that my hardcover library has mostly authors from the past - Dickens, Poe, Twain, Vonnegut, Anderson. But they wrote to engage an audience through the written medium of stories, or novels - a book - which became best-sellers. Where as today is not worth doing that.

Can more easily create streaming videos of Minecraft game-play to engage an audience, generating thousands if not millions of views - and financially compensated for it. Not saying is a bad thing!!! And not saying the main goal of writing is to make money - Just saying that writing books, having to give up copyright ownership and most monies being grabbed by publishers and distributors, is financially non-rewarding for the author, the result being that book writing is becoming a lost art.

#24

I think that is true.

Since about 1750 there has been an increasingly progressive (not always in the best sense) move from cognition recognising physical objects most, towards increasing abstraction and growth of stuff that is intrinsically conceptual (your “invisible things”??). All forms of “virtuality”.

Of course, not intrinsically bad, but when the net came along that process exponentiated. And we are adapting to it and adopting it.

(But I’m not sure who is driving the car on all this :smiley:)

Just a comment
TT

#25

Very true.

Book production rarely involves “hot metal” nowadays.

I think regarding the “virtualisation / refactoring” there is a huge, still largely unexplained, meta-social process going on that has serious commercial dimensions that actually have likely impoverished creators–regardless of “physical print” or “online”? There is little discussion of this.

Just a comment (not excessively paranoid)
TT

#26

Right. It is a complex issue of the intersection of corporate control and individual rights.

Just FYI I was always worried that governments took a back-seat as the net developed. It’s dominantly still corporation controlled.

For instance is YouTube a “public library”?
Is Google “a public good”?

This is a refractory issue in all this, I think.

TT (only very mild paranoia)

#27

We just need to look at the libraries. We still have them - or some do. The small local ones shut down. The book bus that took over, does not drive around any more. We can order a book from all the libraries in the country via the internet. You will get a message when it is ready at the local library, only that one is far away and public transportation is not present out there any more.
The still existing libraries sold out of the books, due to now they needed space for paintings, records - movies - and later updates.
Of course times are changing. So did the “customers”. Not everyone can afford the latest in electronics. The cheap models on sale is never compatible.
The Antic bookshops closed - not all of them but many. They closed when the old owner died.

The lovely thing is the little library movement. They are all different, some only a couple of shelves - sheltered from the rain. Take a book, read it- and bring it back. Or put a book in - and take one out. different ideas - printed on the side of the box, shelve, little house - or how the local one is built. The amount of them around shows us, that people do want paper books.

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#28

Right! I think much of what you wrote is very true in a lot of countries.

Though it is getting too-off-topic to go into, librarians, in many Western countries at least, were amongst the first to fully understand the implications (good & bad) of the net and for a period were quite vocal about it–because they were the guardians of art & information and the net seriously impacted them early.

Just a comment, TT

#29

I once lost a book of art.

#30

Tragedy. Disastro.

If you make them you love them …

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Just saying, TT

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#31

@Birthe we must be concerned but;

I will have to check but I think our libraries are still going well, taking on other community roles as well. Yes digital has crept in, but needs to for people who don’t have internet, and now some even have 3D printers. I imagine it differs across countries and within countries but each level of government (we have three - local, state and federal) have responsibilities to provide these essential community services, You can now even borrow digital works from home. So we all know about our council/state and national libraries along with matching galleries.

Our biggest problem is our “national archive” getting the funding to transfer fading books, audio, film and video to secure digital copies. History will be lost, and some of it we do not want to repeat.

In Australia we seem to believe in libraries as a public good funded by the “public Purse”.

This very night we changed our government to one I expect not to try and make everything a private profit centre or close it.

Perhaps it is because of this that I have more faith in the survival of the book.

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#32

I do think OZ has a sense of the communal (though it is pretty awful on its original inhabitants not-funded properly) … Utopia - A film by John Pilger - Official trailer - YouTube

Politics OFF, TT

#33

@TW_Tones

In Denmark too. I know our libraries works very well. It works best for people living close to them though.

I might be influenced due to spending much of my childhood in Libraries. I read all the time and we lived rather close to one. Two of my friends did the same. We were all from good - but not privileged homes. We were all from homes with no tradition for education - and we all graduated from university. We always thought that was due to the influence of the libraries.
Luckily now there are other ways.

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#34

I did not say we are perfect, but todays election result means we will be giving the indigenous people a “voice to parliament” and support the Uluru statement from the heart. The point is our first nations need a voice to be heard rather than others deciding what is best for them.

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#35

Only took about 250 years? :slight_smile:

OZ good sentiments about all this I find suspicious till it is proven true.

I’m not saying YOU are blocking the original Australians.
Merely it is serious fact they have been treated like shit in Oz since 1788 already.

It is a serious social issue.
Just commenting as an anthropologist.

It is nothing directly to do with TW so please ignore me.

TT

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#36

What are the “other ways” now?

Just a query, TT

#37

@TiddlyTweeter

Starting early in kindergarten, lots of digitalization is what is told. Do I doubt it - yes!

#38

Just to underline what is happening elsewhere.
In Italy people like printed stuff.

Here is a 1998 report (a great year on it’s art) of the annual report for the Guardia Di Finanza (“The Financial Police”; an Italian military police force who collect taxes :smiley: ) . These reports anyone can get at a Tax Office on submission of a verified Codice Fiscali ([Proven] Tax Account Number).

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The spread is about changes in uniforms …

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Allora, TT

#39

Lowering the cost of producing art improve the opportunity for creating art, even if a lot of content is boringly similar, going numeric gives a lot more flexibility to creator and increase visibility. It’s much easier to share an e-book than to send an actual, physical book.

For those reasons, and because the attention span of people is lowering due to the omnipresence of dopaminergic stimuli in our modern era, I expect that physical books will continue to decrease in production but increase in value. Fewer books will be printed but those that are will be those considered valuable enough to even bother printing them.

If publishers don’t adapt, authors will self-publish more and more, through platform like Kickstarter. Which I think is a great thing, because being published is notoriously difficult, and stories like “Mother of Learning” would probably have a hard time coming to life without these platforms that are more fair toward the creators. I am however concerned about archiving, the push to digital could be a cultural disaster waiting to happen.

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#40

@tiddlytweeter then as an athropoligist you would be aware of the treatment of indigenous people the world over by so called civalisations and that Australia was the last part of ancient earth to be colonised.

I wonder if there is a single example of fair treatment of indigenous peoples?

History could be our guide to how we may treat alians in the future but sadly hollywood is possibly the greater defining the other as subhuman. Perhaps we are condemed to repeat history.

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