The Future of Reading

1061 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Effects of cultural change

The Future of Reading
Reading – we do it every day. In almost every aspect of our lives and often take it for granted. Reading is essential for human communication and increasing knowledge. However, because reading is so important even a small change can have a significantly large impact on our modern society. We are currently in a midst of a cultural revolution. In which the printed word is being transformed by the digital.
The impact of technology on our individual lives and culture has been a general issue of our time. In her essay “In the Beginning Was the Word,” Christine Rosen analyzes the effects of the image-dominated modern society and its influence on our daily lives, as well our comprehension skills of complex literature acquired through the years of human history. In “Three Tweets for the Web” Tyler Cowan analyzes the effects of a new cultural medium of our society and its effectiveness on multitasking as well as increasing intellectual satisfaction of our highly literal modern society. Rosen and Cowan both present the evidence that our society is in a midst of a culture transition, and printed world is being a less central part of our lives. This cultural transition affects our daily activities in many ways; such as, stimulating distractions, duration of attention span and our efficiency at multitasking.
Rosen, senior editor if New Atlantis, on her essay published in Wilson Quarterly in autumn 2009 “In the Beginning Was the Word,” points out how digital technology, especially in communication and entertainment, affects negatively on our lives socially and cognitively. She believes that although technology might appear as sign of our progress as humans, it is withdrawing us from the core literature. Rosen explains th...

... middle of paper ...

...wan believes, one of the best things about our digital lives is the ease with which we can share ideas with others. It is now possible for readers to connect with each other worldwide, as well as recommend and share their opinions about a particular piece of literature. Our need to engage in “deep reading” will not go away, as Rosen believes. The act of how we read may evolve as it has been evolving since beginning of mankind. How we read and write has evolved from cave walls to stone tablets to paper to keyboards. The digital world will not change what we read, but how we read. Because the experience of reading, the love of narrative, and cravings for story-telling is instilled into our DNA. Reading is a basic human need, it is evolutionary. Even though our means of attaining information or story telling may change, the act of reading is literally forever-lasting.

Show More
Related

  • Are We Digital Dummies Analysis

    647 Words  | 2 Pages

    The topic of technology and our society has become a very controversial subject today. Many people believe that technology is an essential component of our modern world, helping us to improve communication from farther distances as well as giving us easy access to important information. On the other hand, there is the opinion that too much technology is affecting social interactions and our basic development. “Technology…is a queer thing, it brings you great gifts with one hand, and stabs you in the back with the other.” (Carrie Snow.) The CBC Documentary “Are We Digital Dummies” displayed the pros and cons when it comes to modern technology that we use in the western world everyday.

    Read More

  • Montag 451 Dialectical Analysis

    634 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the novel, technology, especially the enormous TV screens, are responsible for replacing literature, intellectualism, and curiosity. People spend so much time watching programming that is considered unproductive. People in the novel became less likely to search for knowledge and discover new abilities. This happens frequently today. Many people are engrossed in their technology and mass media. They have become less likely to...

    Read More

  • Persuasive Essay On The Shallows

    551 Words  | 2 Pages

    I’m scrolling through the articles on Snapchat and find my way across one with an intriguing title, I instantly tap on it. I begin to scroll further down only to find myself going through extensive paragraphs of information and suddenly this article that seemed so interesting became a bore. In Nicholas G. Carr’s novel, The Shallows, he argues the internet is creating more problems to us humans than actual benefits. Our social skills are starting to lack and our interaction with technology is beginning to heighten. Humans contemplative skills are slowly fading away due to our reliance on the internet to solve our problems. Technology is inevitable by humans, seeing that individuals use it in their everyday lives. Unfortunately, this is a problem considering the use of high-tech gadgets decrease in one’s capacity for concentration, contemplation, and personal memory.

    Read More

  • Media Typography Essay

    742 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout history, the primary focus in life has been to supply oneself with necessities to survive and pass on your legacy through offspring. Now modern life in America has transformed into overloading our brains with advertisements, flashing lights, and constant entertainment regardless if we want it or not. Through considering the history of typography and the transition into the age of entertainment, the switch from typography to television will adversely affect public discourse and through the development of media metaphors, and along with the rise of the internet and its convince has shaped contemporary American thought, sending a wave of ignorance from one generation to the next. This new way of mechanized life is the way of the future,

    Read More

  • Essay One

    788 Words  | 2 Pages

    Carr supports his claims by including personal experiences with the Internet of others. Scott Karp who was literature major in college, admitted to Carr that he has stopped reading books altogether (732). Karp now prefers to read everything online. Karp also questions whether the Internet has changed his course of thinking (Carr, 732). Bruce Friedman explained how he barely has the tolerance for reading long pieces, and skimming is now how he reads (Carr, 732). By Carr discussing changes brought by other technologies, he strengthens the support of his claims. He proves that technology does have a way of affecting us cognitively whether the effect is negative or positive. Carr also proves that as technology advances our mind is modified to according to those advances. “As we use what the sociologist Daniel Bell has called our “intellectual technologies”—the tools that extend our mental rather than our physical capacities—we inevitably begin to take on the qualities of those technologies” (Carr, 737).

    Read More

  • Two Source Essay

    567 Words  | 2 Pages

    Carr’s article introduced author and developmental psychologist, Maryanne Wolf’s idea that “we are how we read” and how she worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net (a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else) may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when earlier technology (the printing press) made long and complex works of prose commonplace. Carr feels that humans are losing their ability to read and think like they used to before the internet was so popular.

    Read More

  • The Negative Effects Of Technology In The Shallows By Nicholas Carr

    1338 Words  | 3 Pages

    First, he provides an overview of the history and development of the book as well as the development of reading. Carr analyzes and explains the effects of these developments on the individuals. Furthermore, he notes that the Internet recreates and alters a medium’s content by the use of hyperlinks, which ultimately distracts readers, and by separating the content into organized chunks. These characteristics make the content “searchable” which stimulates skimming behavior or superficial reading. As a result, readers retain less information due to the lack of deep, analytical reading. In addition, online texts often incorporate opinions, beliefs, or skewed viewpoints of certain topics, which can have negative effects on readers. Carr also addresses that some opponents believe that hardcopy reading was a result of “impoverished access” (111) and that the desire to use the fast paced web is a result of a quickening pace of life and work over the past few

    Read More

  • Technology In The Shallows

    716 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Nicholas Carr’s novel The Shallows, Carr believes that technology is taking over the way we should think. Anytime a person researches and reads online there is potentially significant damage to the way the human brain processes and retains information. When a person think about looking up information or just looking for something to do, they make a beeline for the Internet. Very few people are willing to pick up a book and start reading it these days, they would rather use digital media or other Network. The Network is very powerful and is getting more powerful each day. Andrew Brown once said “The internet is so big, so powerful, and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life.” (Brown Brainyquotes). Although the Internet easily catches the reader’s eye and has become more common in schools in recent years, the Internet is responsible for decrease of social skills.

    Read More

  • The Multitasking Generation an Article by Claudia Wallis

    1005 Words  | 3 Pages

    Though being exposed to technologies like computers from an early age may have given us the ability to do things more efficiently, technology has also made us less dependent on ourselves. Claudia Wallis, editor for Time, in her article makes known in The Multitasking Generation, “That level of multiprocessing and interpersonal connectivity is now so commonplace that it’s easy to forget how quickly it came about. Fifteen years ago, most home computers weren’t even linked to the Internet” (63). There are many things that students are able to do on their computer that their parents aren't even aware of or that the parents couldn’t do themselves. My parents always tell of how looking through the library’s card catalog and searching for the books they needed only to find out that they have been taken out. Computers have allowed us to do many things faster for example, write much faster than a typewriter or pen and paper and correct typing errors without starting over. The computers and technology we now have makes it easier to almost anything and with technology so easily at your fingertips it o...

    Read More

  • The Purpose Of Carr's Essay: Is Google Making USupid

    1274 Words  | 3 Pages

    The purpose of Carr’s essay is to inform the reader about one skill that he believes is being undermined, which is reading. He believes the internet is rewiring the way the human mind operates. The internet has captured our attention and has shaped our process of thought. He recognizes how the change we are going through is the loss of book habits. The Web is now our default starting point for the majority of our work. He even has felt this skill eroded within himself, stating, “I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading” (Carr 408). He’s not alone, Bruce Friedman, a blogger has described how the internet has altered his mind, “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or print” (410). I am sure Carr and Friedman are not the only ones who have felt a change in their ability to read a book or a lengthy article and not get distracted. As a society, we have all been impacted by this, and we are Carr’s audience for his essay.

    Read More

  • Read With Purpose Essay

    1045 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Libraries are filled with masterpieces that great authors toiled over to complete, but the pages in the books go untouched by many of us” (Barnett-Bey 333). You may either perceive reading as a privilege or take it for granted. Reading is one of the most fundamental parts of our daily lives, that’s why some people may take it for granted and not even realize it because of how we use it every single day. It is important because it improves concentration, vocabulary, and imagination. People often read for their own entertainment and it improves the mind’s ability to understand ideas, follow arguments and detect implications. The amount of people who are illiterate is astonishing. “The challenge is taking the time to read respectable literature, but it is vital to us as individuals and as a country” (Barnett-Bey 336). I couldn 't imagine how hard illiterate people 's lives must be, living every day and not being able to read simple sentences, read a cookbook and try to learn how to cook or even a sign in a resturant. General wonderings occur to me of how and what people will be reading in a generation, and if it will actually make a difference in their lives. "If we, as a society, do not connect to literature by reading we are missing the very essence of our being" (Barnett-Bey 334).

    Read More

  • Argument On Literacy

    1267 Words  | 3 Pages

    “While it is true that more books are sold today than ever, recent statistics show that only about 15% of books bought today are read. Evidently, they are of more use as furniture—coffee-table books—than as a source of information or aesthetic buzz. The statistics continue; of those that are read, less than 20% are read all the way through. The unfinished book symbolizes the state of attention spans today”. Eric McLuhan opens up his 2010 argument against technology with this quote. He seems to believe that literacy is only fully achieved through limited technology and hard copies of books. He fails to realize there is more to literacy that picking up a book defined as a ‘classic’ and reading it cover to cover. Literacy covers all spans of artistic

    Read More

  • Explore Communication Through Digital Language

    1034 Words  | 3 Pages

    Since the first text message was sent in 1992 digital communication has affected our lives in both positive and negative ways. It has changed the way we run our lives, making us more efficient, more effective human beings. However many people claim that digital communication has had a purely negative impact on our civilisation. They believe the only product from digital communication is laziness. It is widely believed that the current generation is more lethargic then any other that came before it, this is apparently caused by digital communication. We have become lazier in two ways with our actions and our language. Both of these have apparently been caused by digital communication, because we no longer have to leave the house as we can get everything we need from the internet and as John Sutherland said in The New Statesman in 2008 “ It masks dyslexia, poor spelling and mental laziness. Texting is penmanship for illiterates.” This provokes laziness, as people no longer have to try to spell correctly or use correct grammar since spell check was invented. Others think that digital communication is the new, exciting way humans are adapting to their ever-changing surroundings for example Mallary Jean Tennore said in Poynter in March 2013 that “Language is always evolving, and technology is a healthy part of that evolution.” John Sutherland’s statement that the Internet masks certain parts of ourselves can be interpreted in a few different ways it can be used to say that people are to free on the internet as they don’t suffer any consequences due to anonymity or a ’mask’, it can mean how John Sutherland meant it as a way to hide illiteracy or it could be a mask that blocks tone, facial expressions and body language which is essentia...

    Read More

  • Reading is Important in Learning Languages

    994 Words  | 2 Pages

    Nowadays, many people think reading is not necessary, since there are so many sources of information and types of entertainment, such as TV, cinema and the Internet. I believe they are wrong because reading is very beneficial in many ways.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Media And Technology

    1238 Words  | 3 Pages

    Media and technology have an ever increasing role in how we as humans communicate with one another as well as help impact our culture. The printed word, once able to be mass produced helped usher in an era where where people could seek the education and reading skills they desired, brought print and knowledge to the masses. Now with the more common use of digital communication and media outlets, our options for information and communication are almost entirely unimpeded. Technology allows us to live through multiple Renaissance type periods filled with ever growing pools of information from which to share, and culture changing happenings coming from every corner of our connected world.

    Read More

More about The Future of Reading

Open Document