The Future of Reading

In schools and colleges, in these audio-visual days, doubt has been raised as to the future of reading – whether the printed word is on its last legs. One college president has remarked that in fifty years "only five per cent of the people will be reading.”

E.B. White, “The Future of Reading” (1951)

It’s now been more than sixty years since this was written, and it might be argued that not only are there more than five percent of the people reading, but that with the Internet there are more by percentage reading today than there were sixty years ago. Technology is funny that way. In those “audio-visual days” of 1951 – radio, phonograph, film, and television – there must have been a perceived threat to the printed word. Why read when you can just listen or watch? But then why go to the theater or ballet or concert or symphony, all of which are accessible by audio-visual technology? And the Internet expands those audio-visual possibilities. But it also expands the reading possibilities. It may well be that electronic communication increases rather than restricts communication. White goes on to write, “Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy. . . . This gives the experience of reading a sublimity and power unequalled by any other form of communication.” Maybe. And I’m hesitant to go against the thought of E.B. White, for me, the grand American writer and thinker of the 20^th century. But it might just be that technological advances can broaden our means of communication (including reading), its “sublimity and power,” rather than constrict it, as long as we keep it all connected, particularly connected to our thought, our experience, and our imagination.