READING EVOLVED

 

READING IS A PHYSICAL ACTIVITY

        "Staying Awake" approaches an idea that reading is not just a mental activity, but a physical one as well and that is why it is not valued as much anymore. People do not have the time to completely immerse themselves in a text and analyze the depth and meaning of it. Ursula K. Le Guin says that "reading is not 'interactive' with a set of rules or options, as games are; reading is actual collaboration with the writer's mind. No wonder not everybody is up to it." And in "The Reading Brain in the Digital Age," Ferris Jabr says "text is a tangible part of the physical world we inhabit," and "the brain literally goes through the motions writing when reading." Technology is today's society is built for efficiency, unlike reading a book where it takes time to completely grasp a concept. Guin compares reading in the past, when it was looked upon as a nobleman's hobby in the past, but today it is regarded more as a chore that people do not have time for. Just as reading is a physical activity, we use that physical activity to develop skills. Karen Swallow Prior discusses in "How Reading Makes Us More Human" it is because of reading that we have learned certain social cues such as appropriate time to empathize. Literacy begins with bedtime strories. Children who begin to read fiction at relatively early ages appear to understand people better than those who do not. Reading is a physical activity that helps develop personal and cognitive skills. 

 

 

 

 

PEOPLE NOT BEING ABLE TO MULTITASK

Nicholas Carr in "Does the Internet Make You Dumber" says “People who juggle many task are less creative and less productive than those who do one thing at a time,” and Guin says “if people make time to read, it’s because it’s part of their jobs, or other media aren’t readily available, or they aren’t much interested in them.” In today’s society juggling many different tasks is common, whereas reading a novel in one sitting is not. People just are not making time anymore to sit down and read and analyze a book like they used to be and according to Carr and Guin that could be the reason why it is limiting our knowledge. In "Reding to Have Read" by Ian Bogost, he discusses how technology was created to eliminate comprehension for speed and with this speed, one is able to accomplish more tasks because they are not occupying all of their attention on reading a book. This is what Guin, in "Staying Awake" is afraid of, how mindless the reader has become that all they want to do if see the last word just as fast as they saw the first word. All of these articles encompass the idea that is elaborated on in "Staying Awake" of the need for reading is declining because of the demand to be able to multitask. 

 

 

 

 

THE AUDIENCE INFLUENCES THE MEDIA

In "Staying Awake," Guin goes on to talk about modern publishing companies operating as revenue-driven entities instead of a means to share literature. If we’re on board with this assumption, we have only ourselves (the readers) to blame. The things that we demand are what publishers are going to produce. Best Sellers are named as such because the public can’t get enough of them. This is similar in the way that new dictionaries are published. New words are constantly being created and old words are being used in ways that give them new meanings. Anne Curzan in her TED Talk "What Makes a Word Real?" expands on this idea by discussing her experience with words as an english professor. She talks about learning new words through her students and makes an excellent point that in the 18th century, people were being critics of the way language was evolving. Also in the other TED Talk, "Txting is killing language. JK!!!" John McWhorter talks about how the people create language, just as Curzan said that the people create words to put in the dictionary. This connects to "Staying Awake" because Guin talks about how the people influence publishers on what to publish and what would make the biggest profit. This is the same concept McWhorter discusses and how people create language to entertain and benefit them. We have evolved tremendously since that time, and language continues to evolve and shape towards the future. So one cannot simply conclude that reading has declined, just as one cannot conclude that language is deteriorating. They are both molding to the technologies of today and taking new forms.