The death of the book, again
We’re in another round of concern about the “death of the book”, and, in particular, the claimed inability or unwillingness of young people to read full-length books. I’m not going to push too far on the argument that this complaint is ancient, but I can’t resist mentioning the response of my younger brother, who, when asked if he wanted a book for Christmas, answered “thanks, but I already have one”). That was around 50 years ago, and he went on to a very successful legal career.
Fifty years ago, the main competitors for books were TV and radio. Critics at the time decried the passive mode of consuming these broadcast media, compared to the active engagement required by reading. Now, in many respects, the complaint is the opposite. The various services available on the Internet are interactive, and engrossing, finely tuned to keep our attention.
The most notable feature of the Internet, in this context, is the still-central role of reading and writing. That’s diminished a bit as it’s become easier to share video and images on sites like TikTok and YouTube, but there’s still a huge amount of text out there. Lots of people who would probably never have picked up a pen after leaving school fifty years ago are now tapping out messages of various kinds on Facebook, What’sApp and so on.
Then there is the essentially limitless array of online newspapers, magazines, blogs, newsletters and so on. At every level of quality and complexity, and in every imaginable form, the amount of text that’s easily available to read is massively greater than it used to be. And time is finite. Even though I don’t watch much TV, and avoid online video completely, and even though I’m a very fast reader, I don’t have as much time for books as I used to. I’m hoping to change that as I go into retirement, but we’ll have to wait and see.
In these circumstances, the surprise is that books (and newspapers for that matter) have held on as well as they have.
Text has even reconquered territory from video. It’s now commonplace, particularly for young people, to watch video with the subtitles on, apparently so that they can “flick their eyes up and read ahead, then take in the whole scene quickly, and look back down at their phone”. I imagine we will soon be hearing from auteur-style directors complaining that the ubiquity of such subtitles means that the true visual genius of their work is not fully appreciated.
Rather than bemoan the decline of books, this might be a good time to consider why we read (and write) books and what they are good for. Are they essential, or just a specific technology which is less needed now, but for which there is a lot of nostalgia (like cursive handwriting).
I’ll focus on academic work, since it’s what I know best. In this context, it’s striking that some disciplines, like economics, have largely given up on books in favour of journal articles (I’m an exception, but I mostly write “trade” books aimed at a general educated public). In others, like history, having at least one book seems to be essential for tenure And, in sociology, it’s claimed, there are “book departments” and “article departments”
Are these differences cultural and path-dependent, or do they reflect fundamentally different ways of undertaking and communicating research. I can see arguments for both views, but I’ll leave that up for discussion. Regardless, it seems likely that the shift away from books will continue. Fields where books have been the traditional way of communicating will either have to change, or to treat book reading as a research skill that can’t be assumed and needs to be taught/inculcated.
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A lot of the reason young people have the subtitles on (and it's a reason I share) is because the way movies, at least, are recorded makes dialogue almost impossible to hear.
My son tells me it's because they're recorded to be listened to on multi-channel sound systems, and a hi-fi stereo just doesn't cut it.
No object matches the level of intellectual and emotional complexity one can get from a book. They have the intimacy of words that appear inside one's head and the scale of hours of one's time. But that's possibly a bit like saying nothing matches the structural strength of steel - it's only relevant if you're operating at a certain scale. Many people, today and always, don't operate at that scale. It's hard to make an argument that's a bad thing without sounding snobbish.
I would, however, argue that universities should operate at a "book level" of complexity. Textbooks and journal articles are fine for technical understanding, but I think a bachelors-level graduate should have gone deep enough to read a book from start to finish. Leave the other stuff to technical colleges. And academics don't need to write books, but I like to think they read them. If you're only reading articles, you're not challenging your ideas very deeply.