The printed word is fading from view. Get over it!
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It is ironic that I am writing about the decline and fall of the written word. The written word had a great run, starting perhaps as many as 6,000 years ago with Sumerian cuneiform. Writing has to compete today with more compelling and natural forms of human communication—audio and video—often served on the Internet.
Many people bemoan the decline of printed material. They equate the rise of the Internet, and inexpensive-to-produce video and audio, coming at the detriment of printed words, as a decline in civilization. You may be someone who holds this opinion.
It is easy to understand the sense of loss and disconnectedness caused by this technological shift. At its core, this attitude is elitist and reminiscent of the Luddites. This attitude ignores the democratic nature of the shift from printed to electronic communication. Time is limited. We elect to use our time in the way that makes the most sense to ourselves. Most people prefer to watch TV, listen to music, audio books or podcasts, or surf the Internet over reading a book, newspaper or magazine.
Writing and the written word is not natural. We must be schooled to read and write. It was the best disciplined, efficient way to communicate or archive information when alternatives were word-of-mouth, painting or smoke signals. The use of the written word exploded over the course of civilization because of this. Johannes Guttenberg’s invention of movable type printing accelerated the use of the printed word in Western culture and eventually worldwide. Public schooling further accelerated this trend.
Public schools, grades K-12, are conservative by nature. They are slow to change. They revel in the written word having had centuries to perfect their skills in teaching and assessing its use. Our teachers are written word experts. They are rarely expert in the creation and use of video and audio. Our children learn this from each other, from Hollywood, YouTube and other sites on the Internet. They have eclipsed the education system in their understanding and use of these newer technologies.
I find that listening to a well-narrated audio book trumps the written word. The narrator, often a professionally trained actor, brings the author’s words to life. The narrators often employ different voices for different characters. Non-fiction is also enhanced by having it spoken versus reading it yourself. Tables, charts and images are the only-missing piece.
I view audio and video is to the written word as oil painting is to drawing with pencil. These activities require training and discipline. The author, artist or director has to tell a story, communicate what is on their mind. The better the story telling, the more likely the audience will appreciate the effort. Mastering oil painting is more difficult than drawing. The painter often begins with a sketch but adds color, stroke, technique and dimension, as well as form and perspective. The same is true of audio and video. One begins with a script and then fills in the detail and enhances that script. Creating a good video requires many more skills than writing the script.
While schools may be slow to adopt technology many librarians understand and are changing. Librarians are evolving their missions from being keepers and lenders of printed material. Our local libraries, Westport and Wilton, Connecticut spring to mind, have become public facilities for all types of human communication. They have public computer terminals, lend audio books and videos, and host movies and seminars. They make online audio book borrowing available via the services of the Online Computer Library Center. If libraries are moving beyond the printed word, shouldn’t we all?
I will assume that this is another of your strange attempts at humour. If not we all have a problem. While there is little doubt that information is now available more quickly and easily than in the past, the ability to create with your imagination is high with a book low with other media. To listen to a “actor” interpret a book for you negates your ability to create. If your ideal “world” is one where we all think and act the same way, then perhaps you are on the right track. What an awful place that would be
@MR Luddite. It was not an attempt at humor. It was a technological failure that should now be fixed. Sorry about that.
Comments from Facebook and email:
*Serdar
Some truth there, but I find audiobooks insufferable – you can’t “read” them at your own pace, or skim them by glancing as you flip. Audio complements text without replacing it.
January 22 at 2:00pm
*Jim
Good post, but I don’t think it’s that either/or. For example, individuals’ learning styles differ, and different media will be more or less beneficial for different people. I have no doubt at all that I learn some things better from print than I do from video and especially audio, though I’m very happy for my print to be in electronic rather than … See Morehard format. There are probably data about the effectiveness of different media for different tasks and different learning styles but it would take a while for me to find it. The issue of democratisation of the media is a different matter, and we’ve had a conversation about this and probably won’t convince each other. A final point – the Luddites might have been many things, but elitist was not one of them, unless you twist the word really hard.
January 22 at 7:05pm
*Richard
I did not mean to imply that the Luddites were elitist. I meant that the attitude of those who bemoan the change is BOTH elitist, i.e., print is better than other forms of communication, AND reminiscent of the Luddites, “who protested… against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt were leaving them without work and … changing their entire way of life.”
At its heart my essay’s most basic point is that technology and civilization march on (maybe forward, perhaps not) and it is better to adapt, as I think the librarian community is doing, at least in Southwestern Connecticut, USA than to to cling to the old ways because they are more familiar and comfortable.
January 23 at 7:57am ·
*Jim
Depends what you mean. My view is that technology is, and should be, contestable. Reading your posts and blogs, you do this all the time yourself! Let me cut & paste some paragraphs from my lecture on technological change in my Sociology of Work course, let me know what you think -
An important issue that we need to consider is whether technology can act as an independent source of change. This involves a debate over what is called “technological determinism”.
Technological determinism means that technology has inescapable consequences – that is, technology leaves us with little choice about how we do things. In fact, many accounts of technological change appear to give technology causal power. For example, we often hear things like “the automobile created suburbia” or “computers have changed the way we work”…. See More
Examples like these are called reification. This term has various meanings. For example, it can mean that relations between people are treated as if they were relations between things over which people have no control. Thus “the computer has changed the way we work” is a reification, because it sounds as if it was computers that did something, rather than humans introducing computers in order to do something. There is a very significant difference.
An alternative view of technology tells us that the history of technology is a history of human actions. Thus we want to know, who developed the technology and in what circumstances? Why was the innovation first adopted in one place rather than another? Most importantly from the sociologist’s viewpoint, who benefited from the innovation and who lost out? Technological change occurs in a social, economic, political and cultural context in which there are competing interests. There are many examples of technology being “shaped” by choices made in the interest of one group or another. That is, technology does not develop autonomously or in a socially neutral way.
*Serdar
@Jim: This is the exact problem I have with the concept of “information wants to be free” (a logical fallacy on the face of it, since information doesn’t “want” anything). It would be better to say that people want free access to certain kinds of crucial information, but saying that leaves you with a judicious and temperate assessment instead of an… See More instant slogan. Guess which one wins.
I forget who said it now, but there’s another slogan that goes: “Technology is neither good nor evil, but neither is it neutral.” It assumes the shape of the social and economic vessels it is poured into, and every time we think of it as being a force “coming in from the outside”, we miss the point.
Sun at 5:29pm ·
*Richard
Jim:
Your points are well made.
You wrote, “…who benefited from the innovation and who lost out?” With the shift away from the printed word the beneficiaries are most people who have access to computer-based terminals. This includes smartphones, which are small computers. Communication via audio or video+audio file is easier for many, if not most people. People without access to computers and the visually and auditory handicapped are net losers. Although there are accessibility applications most audio and video doesn’t play nice with them.
You also wrote, “There are many examples of technology being “shaped” by choices made in the interest of one group or another. That is, technology does not develop autonomously or in a socially neutral way.”
The business adage version of this is, “Just because you build a better mouse trap doesn’t mean the world will beat a path to your door.” Marketing, sales and PR efforts are necessary too.
Serdar:
I agree with your point about people being the force behind technological adoption.
Sound bites usually trump more precise statements. Human beings are rarely rigorous in their assessment of what they see, hear or read. We just want to be entertained. Dostoevsky made a related point in the “The Grand Inquisitor” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Inquisitor. Shorthand version, “People prefer food over religion or freedom.”
Frisch’s third law is “Technology changes, always.” Corollary “The rate of technological change increases with time.”
*Binnie
Richard:
I cannot buy into your premise of the death of the printed word…..comparing the written word to oil painting. I for one do NOT enjoy listening to a book. Perhaps this speaks to our different ways of learning….you may be an auditory learner, I am not…I am experiential. Nothing will ever replace the smell and feel of a good, treasured book. No, I do not want to carry around a kindle or other contraption, I wan to turn real pages…maybe even make notations in the margins.
I do believe, perhaps along with you and many others, that the way we communicate…and read…is changing, evolving.
But please Richard, do not kill books and slaughter our society. The western world is crumbling fast enough.
*Sam
It might take more skill to create a movie than to write the script, but it takes more skill to read a book than to watch a movie.