The Future of Reading and Books
The biggest difference I personally have seen in reading and books since I was a kid is the format in which I can consume them. The internet was just becoming mainstream as I was going through my formative years, so the digital nature that reading has taken on and become mainstream is probably the biggest change. The closest thing I remember seeing as a kid to digital formats were the audiobooks available on cassette tapes and cds. I remember even checking them out once for the book I was reading just for the novelty of the experience. Fast forward to today, and there are a whole host of different ways in which digital reading occurs, and no one gives much thought to them anymore. From my personal thoughts and observations, it seems to me that people today are reading much more than they were when I was a kid, they just aren't necessarily reading books and stories: they are reading articles and the plethora of social media posts that are never ending.
Looking into the future, I think that books are here to stay for the long run. While people may not continue to read them in the same numbers, the originality and art that goes into them is the necessary fuel that the TV and movie industry needs to continue to thrive. A fun, far-future speculation of mine is that there would be some sort of hybridization between books and television. With the rise of virtual reality and all the technology that is incorporated with that idea, I think it would be a neat trend to use books as fuel for the worlds in which we could explore in virtual reality: you could experience a story literally from the eyes of a main character.
The difference in format is really huge! I should have thought about social media and articles as well, but I was focused more on narratives--I do think that if you add up the social media posts people read it would definitely contribute to an increase in the amount of reading that people do nowadays. I wonder, too, that if the first study Le Guin references was only 1,006 people... I mean, more than 5 times that amount participated in The Great American Read polls and that's a small population of actual readers and viewers of the associated media.
ReplyDeleteYour comment about virtual reality is a really great idea! It would be so cool to be able to listen to an audiobook while taking a visual tour of the book's setting in virtual reality! I can see that format being a really appealing way to get more people excited about reading, and I would love to experience it myself some day.
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