I’m back to my friend author Sven Birkerts again today, and his book, The Gutenberg Elegies. He postures that reading today is not like reading “back in the day,” where the book was the main medium for learning and gaining information. On the other hand, today’s “readers” have grown up with electronic gadgets bombarding them with song and image so that they “never experiences a sensation singly.” Here is a hint at how technology is impacting our ways of not only reading, but also writing and knowing. For example, history as contained in a book is linear, mimicking the way it actually occurs — in a straight line, governed by time. But history as contained in a computer database is not linear. It is “written” by the person accessing the database, and may never be duplicated because other users may make other choices.
As for knowing, in books, we learned content. Today, there is too much information in databases, so readers must learn how to access and manage information as opposed to filling their minds with material, albeit filtered through the eyes of the author, but content nevertheless.
… or a magazine, or newspaper, or even a web site with solid, informative text?
For me, it’s books. I have stacks throughout my house. In fact, many books remain in their bags because I love the touch, feel, and smell (mostly) of new books. And at the rate I’m going, these books will be in their bags for a very long time. (Damn the Borders coupon program.
Now to the point, I’m reading an interesting and thought-provoking book titled The Gutenberg Elegiesby Sven Birkets. Birkets muses about reading, writing, and culture in both traditional and today’s high tech world. He asks a question that I often obsess over: “What is the place of reading and of the reading sensibility in our culture as it has become?”
He goes on to say: “Our era has seen an escalation of the rate of change so drastic that all possibilities of evolutionary accommodation have been short-circuited. … The way that people experience the world has altered more in the last fifty years than in the many centuries preceeding us.”
Wow, scary stuff. And the worst of it is, we have no way to evaluate or categorize these changes because of the speed with which they are occurring.
One change I dare to put on the table is that people are reading less, and younger generations are reading even less than that. What does this mean? Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? How will society change? In what new ways will our culture evolve?
Friends, all I have is questions. Thanks to Mr. Birkerts to attempting to pose some answers.
I am outraged. I am incredulous. I am disgusted.
Oil companies are making record profits
Pharmaceutical companies are raking it in.
HMO’s are doing very well
Yes, I am outraged, incredulous, and disgusted about the aforementioned, but I am more outraged, incredulous, and disgusted that the people of our country are taking it in silence. Seems we’ve lost the plate let alone who is standing up to it.
I’ve been around a while. I was around “back in the day” when there was an array of stores and products from which to choose. In this cost-driven, corporate-ruled economy we have come to be, the choices have narrowed both in products and places. A few provide for the multitudes, a few determine the fashions, the makeup, the colors. I don’t know about you, but I really dislike the current fashions. Young women look pregnant, and the colors are dark and drab. I can’t stand crocs, and then there are also the electric colors in sportswear that don’t go with anything but themselves (great marketing ploy – spend more, more, more). My feeling on it all is that I hate to go to the mall – it depresses me. Give me a thrift store any day.
What does this have to do with communication? Back to choices – as the choices narrow, and stores and restaurants are driven out of business, there is the piece about informing employees and customers. This isn’t happening. Workers are showing up for work, people are coming to shop or eat and surprise! The place is shut down, out of business, poof!
What kind of decent behavior is this? Simply slam the door in people’s faces with no warning or plan? How many of you have had this happen?
Here’s another one that happened to me recently. I am one of the millions of Americans who take an antidepressant, or happy pill as they are fondly known. I received a letter one day from my HMO saying that psychiatric drugs would no longer be covered (what in the hell is the logic in this? They will pay a zillion times more when depressed and bipolar, and other people succumb to physical disorders their happy heads fought off). I immediately called my HMO to ask about my specific situation and was told not to worry, that I would continue to be covered as I had been in the past. Relief. Short lived – when I went to fill my prescription a few weeks later, coverage was denied. I came home, called yet again, and was told that yes, my conversation with the representative was recorded, and yes, he had said I would be covered. However, a rather testy young man said I am not and will not be covered.
I ask you, is this piss poor communication? Is this a professional way to deal with customers? Is this a way to garner good will for when it’s needed in the future?
Yes, I am outraged, incredulous, and disgusted.