I know you have noticed, but our new technologies have moved more and more communications from written word to pictures and videos. On most news-type websites if you click on a headline you will more often get a video as you will a text article.
Many more people watch movies or buy (or download for free) music than read books or magazines. Reading is slipping away; writing is worse, my mother would be appalled.
Does it really matter? For a while, I didn't think so. New technologies make the brain work differently, and people adapt to the way the world is. Using a computer has certainly enriched our lives. Without it I couldn't read all of your blogs and get to know what goes on in your heads.
I remember when cell-phone technology first allowed people to take pictures. I thought -- who would ever want to take pictures all the time. But now people do, all the time. Why they do it still baffles me, but they certainly do. I went to a Red Sox game and the people in front of me must have taken ninety pictures. Pictures of them at the game, of the players, of the hot dog guy, of them eating hot dogs, buying popcorn, the popcorn guy. I don't know if they will ever look at them. They never looked at the game.
But, who cares. They had a good time.
But, now studies are coming out that show that if you don't read and write, and instead let your brain get information by watching videos, your use of language diminishes. Your brain gets sloppy. You don't have as many complex ways to express yourself, and hence you don't rely on as many complex ways to think.
The world is complicated. If we think about it only in simple terms, then we get simple solutions.
That is how we got our current President. He counted on people to be like him and think in simple terms about complex problems.
Now, our country is the butt of the world and a lot of people are dead and dying, have bad health care, bad mortgages, high credit card debt, bad science, polluted air, dependence on fossil fuels, and fear of foreigners. Not good.
See, it makes a difference. (to put it simply)
Go on -- read,think,type, read.
4 comments:
As a reader (and a bookseller,) I heartily approve your message. :)
I'll second (or third?) that!
I'll 4th that!
I don't like when there is a news link with only video and no text. I like to read it so I can skim it quickly. Videos take too long and waste my time!
I'll take a fifth and concur that it's sad, very sad that reading is dying the same slow and painful death that killed letter writing...
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