I've told people many times that when Tropical storm Floyd blew through New Jersey several years ago we lost power twice where I live. For two days we had no access to phones, computers, cell phones and televisions. By the time the power came back on I was feeling emotionally and intellectually relaxed. It was wonderful and contributed to the feeling that we really need to re-learn what it is like to live the full human experience; truly exercising our cognitive and conceptual abilities. I think Mr. Morford bags it here and there is a book out called Distracted that looks at this.

Sound bites tell us what to eat, drive, wear, love, hate, and who to vote for. Is there a book that tells us how to end our soundbite addiction ? It probably wouldn't sell very well, would it ?

See: Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death.

Well, the old saying (about cable), "70 channels and nothing's on" apparently has become true of the wired world too, unless we choose carefully.

I hate these kinds of articles! We "should" be reading books and not rotting our brains at the computer or watching television! Grrr! It IS possible one can read books, enjoy quality television, stay away from the drivel (such as ALL mainstream news programs!), work, and enjoy culture!! I get tired of the "left" always declaring war on popular culture! Some of it is good and some of it isn't (and we won't agree on that anyway: I hate baseball, football and basketball!) (;

Are you kidding? Just reading CD and its posts takes me all day.

Apparently, MM has access to a whole different Net - one that's not as dull and repetitive as television. Seriously, YouTube keeps him from reading? There's like a handful of watchable vids posted per week, the average of which is 3 minutes long. Christ, man, get some self-discipline already. Ya find time to eat and write and f**k and sleep, don't ya? Shit, if MM had a "real" job, he'd have to cut out the writing, f**king and most of the eating just to get his fill of "tiny shots of pseudo-meaning and media and nothingness."

Not to brag, but so far this year, I've read "East of Eden," four from Dashiell Hammett ("Red Harvest," "The Glass Key," "The Dain Curse" and "The Thin Man,") McKee's "Story," "The Art of Dramatic Writing," "The Art of War," a Philip Dick collection (24 stories,) "For Whom The Bell Tolls," "The Historian," and "Run With The Hunted," a Charles Bukowski reader. Also read "The Prince" online, as well as at least a dozen screenplays, including all five Oscar noms.

If you wanna read, you'll read. If not, you'll blame TV or iTunes or the Net or your dog.

I agree ezeflyer - just keeping up with the articles on progressive websites and keeping informed takes a good chunk of time.

Plus, I suspect that for all progressives, living under the horribly depressing Bush regime - and being aware of what is going on - literally drains the enrgy right out of you.

In fact, Morford wrote a piece about this right after we all got kicked in the guts by the 04 election.

Bush- fatigue-scandal-fatigue-outrage fatigue + the daily grind of just surviving = not much time/energy for reading 300 page books.

"Proof? That's easy: Just try to sit down with that dense copy of W.G. Sebald or Haruki Murakami after spending any portion of your week online, and watch as your Net-addled brain becomes almost instantly anxious and frustrated, eager after just a couple thousand words to jump away, ogle pictures, watch dumb teens humiliate themselves on YouTube, buy some shoes."

Even at the height of my infatuation with the internet I became anxious and frustrated if I COULDN'T sit down for at least two or three hours a day with a captivating book. I read on the bus, while walking, while eating, while keeping one eye on the hockey. I am a total book slut and - like Mr. Morford - quite the intellectual snob, which is more to the point.

I also did a bit of fact-checking, and learned that only 50% of Americans buy at least one book a year, what they buy is overwhelmingly schlock, and - unfortunately for the forests - they are buying more of it, much more, now than they did a few decades ago.

"Serious" readers are buying more, too, thanks in large part to the internet, which exposes them to a broader range of material than would a poorly-stocked public library or a book store catering primarily to the crap crowd. I mean, I bet someone here on CD will read the piece above and wonder, "Sebald? Who he?" then, having read a couple of on-line reviews, give him a whirl. Thanks to the internet (and credit cards, not to mention air travel) readers in, say, Tuktoyaktuk can do this quite easily.

I did read the piece in the Atlantic, and while I am as concerned as Carr is about the inability (or unwillingness) of most North American adults to read anything more intellectually demanding than advertising copy, I see no compelling evidence that the internet is any more malign than television or radio. But then, maybe I've got my nose in a book too much to notice ...

In college I read the book "Preface to Plato" by Eric Alfred Havelock (forgot name but looked it up on Google). The author's thesis is that "The Republic" is about Plato's worries for the future of humankind because of the spread of … books! He is concerned that the loss of memnonic capacity and the ability to think might result from the convenience of being able to consult a library.
I for one find that people are no more nor less intelligent than they were forty years ago. I have never had such a wide-ranging exposure to information and ideas as now, since learning to use the Internet. Depth of research is important, but so is breadth, as few scholars seem to realize.
I find little time to read fiction anymore as I am too taken up with readings in politics, math, philosophy, and science. Today's literature is probably appearing on the web because the public expects literature to be available on Project Gutenberg … or maybe they'll just wait for the movie.

Rich Griffin July 9th, 2008 1:59 pm

Darn Rich, surely you can't hate the Dallas Cowboy's? Surely not. Say it isn't so!

Rich Griffin-I married into a family of basketball and baseball athletes who now coach high school sports. I, also, do not like to watch those two sports. I'd almost rather stick a pencil in my eye (but then again, I'm a runner, which is it's own form of mental illness...) but I digress...

I totally disagree that folks aren't reading. Our local library has seen an increase of 8% in circulation over this month last year. My kids read all the time, their friends read all the time. One could argue about the literary content of what folks are reading, but people do read, whether it's on the internet or a newspaper or it's Steinbeck. It's like art and subjective.

Personally, I go on binges of reading. Months will go by with out an opened book followed by a single month where two dozen books get read. Books are often read when I have my computer tied up with media processing.

A paper back is always in my purse for when I go to the grocery store or an appointment. My desktop PC doesn't travel at all.

My computer also has a bunch of e-books inside it.

So the moral of my tale; no place in my life is safe from books.

Children on the other hand should be required by school or parents to read an age appropriate novel a week. Their screen time should be limited. They can be at risk of being non-readers thanks to the digital age.

I would suggest the decline in reading is a function of our schools. Many can't read and many that can, simply don't understand what they are reading.

I believe there is an undeniable decline in reading books. I read all the time, always have, but I was taught with different methods than they use now.

Whenever topics like this come up, there are always readers who object to any criticism of computers, which they overgeneralize as "technology." Computers clearly have several malign features to them, apart from shortening people's attention span: electromagnetic radiation, insuring that there's continued reliance on oil and mining, atomizing people, planned obsolescence, simplifying mass surveillance, etc.

I actually use the net mostly for reading: news, research, essays, etc. I've never played online games, and I don't socialize on the net except via email.

But I've had to admit that, while for years I've felt smug about not watching TV, I have taken to essentially watching TV over the internet via YouTube et al. I need to change that.

What you say about the young is true: not only don't they read, they certainly can no longer write clearly enough to be easily understood and the vast majority never even look at a book unless it's required for school - and based on conversations I've had with a few US secondary school teachers, many teachers themselves think literature, reading, and writing should be deemphasized because of the influence of the net.

The young and many American adults also don't know how to do basic research anymore, can't tell a primary source from a secondary source from a tertiary source from an opinion. That is as dangerous to society as the refusal to read.

I always spend plenty of time reading books. There will always be writers of good books, even if there's no popular audience for them. It'll be like those eras of European history when most of the population was illiterate but a few educated people read and wrote because they felt compelled to.

Might be just lost youth, Mark. When we are 25, we are seekers. We dive into philosophy and psychology and mythology and history - or wherever we think the answers lie - and that is in effect our education. I still have all my books from those days, shelves of them. I can't believe I read all of that. Sometimes I read them over again, and am appalled that although I seem to already know the ideas in them, I can't remember reading the books themselves. It was the burning questions that were the motivators for reading in those days. A friend in France just reminded me that the French are generally interested in ideas - whether reality is ideal or material, that kind of thing. Americans generally are not, lacking perhaps the attention span, or maybe the existential curiosity. Have we have lost our burning questions, or have we just gotten old? Or are we material people living in material times, where information pretends to substitute for ideas?

Thomas More - It is worse than you think. Some of us are completely unaware of the Dallas Cowboys.

FRANK1569: What do you sleep 3-4 hours a night?

VOX: Excellent point about the passion (to know) felt in youth. I was an English major so read a good deal, and like you, retain my books. In my case, there is a preference for the mystical and esoteric, so many of my books are out of print, or difficult to find. I consider it a small insurance policy to compensate for the burning of books at Alexandria, and/or the next nazi purge.

I do personally find it harder to keep up with even magazines like Harper's due to the time I spend writing and reading/relating on this and other sites.

If it were not for the internet I wouldn't be reading much other than the Atlantic Monthly and the New Yorker.

Perhaps Google is making me more stupid but it sure makes available a world of information I could not access without it. I read widely from sources around the world as well as Books on the Net. One of the things I really value is the ability to check credentials of authors before I spend a lot of time reading their work. Sorting the wheat from the chaff is far more efficient than ever before and I can use my online dictionaries to help understand terms
I would simply not have time and energy to check out otherwise.

Because I can manipulate print size I can read more and longer than ever before.

I turn CD and the rest OFF at least 1 to 2 times a week. I look outside at the pool and the weather and say why am I sitting here? Summer is to short to be stuck inside. Go to the park feed some birds go for a walk or read a book. I read more in winter anyway when outside is to cold.

voxclamantis July 9th, 2008 10:44 pm
"Thomas More - It is worse than you think. Some of us are completely unaware of the Dallas Cowboys."

Oh my God. it's a national clamity!

An excellent post that I identify very closely with. But I'd suggest to you the real problem is indicative of what you just said about keeping your books. That exploration came from what was explored in school and the way I was taught to think about things to reach a conclusion.

Go to your local jr. HS, HS or college and look at the textbook that reflects a subject you really enjoyed, you will be apalled at what they have and what is no longer available to them. I am. Our schools don't even have a civics class any longer.

This thread contains more intelligent, civilized, simpatico comments than any other I've read. I think that says something about the value of reading. But I'd never depreciate the Net, or I should say, certain parts of the Net. When I think of the aggregate months I've spent doing library research decades ago, and compare that to what Google can give me in 0.25 sec, I never cease to be amazed at how far we've come.

Our media promote easy entertainments, games, sports, mechanical races, simian music, right-wing blowhards, propaganda lightly disguised as news, dimwitted advertising, all manner of violence, pie-eating contests and every rude and stupid dumbing-down device ever conceived by the mind of man. It's no wonder the country's a mess. But finally, the media's control of our culture is beginning to slip. Their audiences are fading away.

If the Net is a step away from all that, then a book is two steps away. It does take a little discipline to balance the two, but not very much.

Long live the book, long life to readers.

I love to read, to re-read, to think about books, and to write them. I live surrounded by books.

Unfortunately, my three-year-old daughter is apparently autistic. She may never learn to read. I may never be able to share my love of literature with her, and that breaks my heart.

She's still young, and there is still hope.

I wish bibliophila was a contagious disease.

JOSHUA: Are you aware of the sudden high incidence of autism rates and possibly some of the Mercury-type components in the mandatory vaccines pushed onto very young children? I read that Chelation can clear the blood and the child can regain his/her INTENDED abilities. Our nation is under thrall to big pharma and I have extremely mixed views on the forced innoculation program. Even in the Middle Ages, things like the plague would not have existed to harm people had there been good sanitation. A lethal circumstance defined as "hospital bed disease" just over a century ago was the outcome of doctors going from bed to bed touching patients with contagious ailments and then delivering babies. In other words THEY were what was lethal because they were too arrogant to wash their hands! I did NOT make this up. It's in the book, "CONFESSIONS OF A MEDICAL HERETIC," written by Robert Mendelson.

I am suggesting the autism may not be permanent. Go to a good health food store and see if you can speak with someone knowledgable. Many things can be corrected, some are the fruit of our over-chemicalized land of the not very free.