The Grand Illusion
The lead article in the latest edition of The Atlantic is entitled “The Age of Reading is Over.”
The article makes a quite persuasive case for that thesis, and for the sub-thesis that Americans in particular have been seduced by the ease of immediate electronic communication, instant on-demand electronic entertainment, computer/AI-assisted (if not largely/totally composed) schoolwork, technical analyses, books, and speeches.
Part of the reason for this, I’m convinced, is that Americans are far more interested in results than process, and failing to understand processes can result in unfortunate outcomes.
Reading itself is a process by which one perceives symbols based on or representing sounds of spoken language, and extracts their meaning to various ends, i.e., entertainment, obtaining personal or professional knowledge. Those symbols we read are also a means for preserving knowledge, data, and other information.
This process requires skill and active participation by the reader, unlike watching/listening to information or even entertainment presented visually/digitally. Today thirty percent of Americans cannot summarize a two-page document or explain what it means, up from less than 20% ten years ago.
But what happens when fewer and fewer people in a culture can actually read and understand the information?
We’re already seeing some of results from the decline in reading, including an ongoing decline in both non-fiction (you know, “factual” books) as well as declines in virtually all fiction except romantasy and fiction about dragons. From 1930 to 2000, the average IQ of Americans increased steadily. Since then, it has declined by three points a decade. American adults now have, on average, a smaller vocabulary than they did fifty years ago. At the same time, the ability of students to understand and analyze written work has declined, as has their ability to compose a coherent sentence and paragraph.
I’ve also noticed a decline in the ability to discern between lies and what is actually supported by verifiable facts (otherwise known as “truth”), and I suspect, but cannot prove, that readers are better at such discernment, primarily because readers can assimilate more information more quickly than viewers.
Not that verifiable facts make much difference to most people now that the age of reading is passing.
> But what happens when fewer and fewer people in a culture can actually read and understand the information?
Then you get people in a culture who make their decisions without any understanding. Who don’t value truth, as you rightly say, and who don’t value thinking, learning, or perhaps even rationality. It’s all “vibes” and emotions. Isn’t it?
Maybe it’s not that bad yet. Maybe we haven’t sunk that far.
But I look at the results from last November’s elections, I look at the continuing support for the “winners” of those elections, and my pessimism only deepens and deepens and deepens…
As well as vocabulary taught at school, I gather there is an increasing online abbreviated vocabulary which, I found recently, excludes people who have been around for some time and is restricted to online media usage.
I was amazed at the speed a child could enter this abbreviated text one handed into a mobile device. I could not match this even with the ability to type reasonably fast with 5 fingers.
When I was young my father was irritated that I was not taught to calculate a square root long hand. I used logarithms which I think he felt was cheating and losing a skill.
Is vocabulary going the same way?