There has been much handwringing recently about the state of reading in our country. Things have got so bad, according to some, that we may be witnessing its actual demise. And we are not just referring to the reading of books.
Few today would conceive that in the middle of the last century we had more than a half-a-dozen newspapers – including one evening edition.
One may hear (since we do not read) that we are not alone in this predicament: the developed countries have conducted reams of research to demonstrate the declining place reading occupies in the lives of citizens. The usual suspects have been identified – TV, video games, I-Pods, smart phones and all the other gadgets that compete, and have evidently displaced books, for our spare time. It would seem that we are following an inevitably trend.
But what is that trend, and is it necessarily bad for us? At its most fundamental level, reading was simply a revolution in communications that occurred several thousand years ago, when mankind invented writing. Before that, we humans were communicating via speech for tens of thousands of years.
Writing and reading were not immediately enthusiastically embraced. We note Plato’s record (in writing!) of Socrates’ complaint that writing would weaken memories and the power of reasoning and questioning. And in acknowledgement of such critiques, the elements of the oral tradition — memorisation, rhetoric, recital – were preserved over the millennia.
The invention of the printing press some 500 years ago further revolutionised communication by making books much more easily available to everyone in society. This created its own storm of protests: would the great unwashed masses have the discipline to imbibe the processes of thinking to make use of the knowledge contained in the books? We invented schools and libraries –
not to mention popularisers called “magazines” and “newspapers” – to accomplish that task.
Reading became part and parcel of our tradition: books signified “civilization”.
But the development in sophistication and efficiency of books to transmit information created its own inexorable impetus. Before long, we were plunged through the invention of the telegraph and the telephone in the 19th century into the present revolution in communications represented by radio, movies, TV, computers and the internet, etc. And we return to the question of the fate of reading in an era of instantaneous electronic communications.
Our intent in outlining the changes in communication methodologies is to emphasise the inevitable nostalgia engendered when we move from one dominant form into another.
The point we want to make is that we cannot remain stuck in the past: when it comes to human affairs, change is inevitable. In grappling with the technique of communication we cannot lose sight of the intent of communication. Contrary to the popular aphorism, we cannot afford for the medium to become the message.
Human advances and success have been based on our ability to communicate knowledge gained by one generation to succeeding generations in ever-increasingly faster ways. This is salutary in view of the exponential growth in our knowledge base.
Rather than decrying the reduced prevalence of reading and insist like Socrates about retaining the oral tradition, we have to marry the old tradition of books and reading to the new vistas open to us.
It is perhaps ironic that the newer modes of communication may revive the foundations of the older oral tradition. If the reading of books decreases, to cope successfully with the explosion of information in the modern world, we may have to stress the importance of memorisation.
Our educational system will have to become au fait with the potential of the new technologies and combine them with the benefits of reading. The secret is not to insist on rote memorisation of arcane facts but on the ability to reason with and manipulate those facts that are now available literally at our fingertips.
