What kind of future does reading have?

Reading and writing will always be important. Just look here at Fluther.

You cannot convey complex thought without the written word. So I don’t see reading going away any time soon.

Good video (or movies) require excellent scripting, and a director (and actors) who can read and understand their lines and roles.

Also, what @marinelife said.

I don’t see reading becoming less important. I for one read for several hours a day and more often when I have free time to read for fun/stress release. Visual media is important, but reading is critical to understanding so many concepts, theories, languages, etc. Visual media will never be able to take readings place fully.

This question reminds me of what I was learning when I was in elementary school that is not being taught today: Phonics and handwriting. For the most part, phonics has been replaced by keyboarding and computer skills. While they’re important, they’re not more important than phonics and handwriting. I have younger cousins that are struggling to read old family recipes and letters because they’re in cursive.

And frankly, I do worry about the amount of time children spend with visual media (whether it be videos, television, computers, what have you). Numerous studies have linked these with lower attention spans. Reading does the exact opposite.

I agree. The written word conveys things in a completely different light than that of the visual world. It allows readers to travel to the deepest corners of their imaginations. It will always have great significance as far as I’m concerned.

To not read is to lose an essential part of what it is to be human—sight impaired folks want to light up their world with the wonders of Braille reading. Reading is the one thing that sparks imagination in a way that purely visual stimulation never could. We need the ability to process information and imagination at our own pace which reading affords us. Reading makes us much more interesting people because it stimulates our own thoughts and expands them. Book sellers, new and second hand have their full status in the marketplace still. However, I do see that more and more the written word will do some shifting in format – the Kindle Reader for example. And we all are aware that some newspapers have stopped their presses but the world of electronic media will grow and grow and the written word will find new venues to reinvent itself freshly.

Visual (and audio) media are going to become increasingly more important as the ease of creating and distributing them increases. It will not replace writing, but will be a useful adjunct. Being able to easily combine text, video, graphics and audio will make for the possibility of unprecedented expressiveness.

Some people have mentioned the importance of reading for stimulating imagination. It makes me wonder whether the imagination is stimulated any less by the spoken word as compared to the written word.

@smilingheart1 There are lots of people who can’t read. There are lots of languages with no writing systems. Are those people less than human?

Anyway, people are still reading and writing all the time… look at texting.

Not for me. I am an Amazon.com addict. I just received one book, am waiting on another, along with several DVD’s, and a book I love on CD for bedtime story time. lol

As with everything, regardless of “mainstream” it all comes down to choice.

I am the only person I know that has never carried a cell phone. I could care less about being “connected” every waking moment.

One of my favorite things is to sit outside on my deck and read a REAL book. :-)

I don’t really know. Still if you look over some books you find a lot of crap nonsense. I’m talking about 3 pages of describing something where it can be done with just one picture. [yeah a picture is worth more than one thousand words still].

Not to mention other sort of book where they go back and forth in a relationship and usually ending banging each other or not doing anything at all. it takes a few days to read a book while it requires a few hours to watch a movie. A movie can’t take a books place but it’s much easier if we could have visuals and thoughts at the same time.

I love reading and I love watching movies but I have to say I’‘d prefer something in the middle. Sometimes we just don’t have enough time to spend all our free time reading. You got a family with kids and a job. You need to sleep and you need some time to socialize with friends and other family members. You need to do house chores too [it’s not like everyone affords a made and a chef or dining at a restaurant every other day]. Not to mention one needs time for themselves to just relax or meditate. I do support people into reading at least one hour per day still if one doesn’t have enough time can use a bit herre and a bit from there to just watch a movie and then use the imagination to fill out some blank spots.

A bright one, there’s always going to be “Once upon a time” after all.

One might as well ask “what kind of future does speaking have?”...

Yeah, like, um, really. For sure.

I’m sure writing will change (it already has changed a lot in the past 20 years).

But consider what’s happened to our phones. Originally people talked on their phones. Now people text and read on their phones more than they talk on them. Adding a videocamera to smartphones isn’t going to change this trend.

Texting is often more convenient than immersing yourself in an immediate, real-time conversation (whether it’s just audio or with video). And reading is often more convenient than plugging in headphones and immersing yourself in a video. That’s why reading will never go away. It satisfies a unique mode of communication. Hell kids today probably read and write much more than kids during the 50’s-80’s, albeit mostly on Facebook and Twitter and whatnot.

It is arguable that the skills our children will need have to do with visual communication, not written. Is it? Make the case. I’m not seeing it. Sorry, but I almost never video chat with my friends. A couple that live far away, maybe once a week or so. Those same friends, as well as the ones who live near me? I communicate via written word (texting, twitter, IM, Facebook, email, etc) every single day. You could take away the video chatting and it’d suck, but we’d still communicate regularly. You could not take away the written word and not have our friendships become largely estranged. I would rather text/email/IM a friend about where and when we’re meeting, if my weekend was good, and how their friend is a dumbass when drunk than call them for those same issues. And video chat? It’s just so clunky and crappy quality and more a novel idea than a novel reality.

Visual mediums are more readily accessible, sure. That doesn’t mean they replace other parts of our lives. There are times I’d rather watch a video on something than read – but, it’s usually that I’d rather watch a well-done documentary than read a poorly-done textbook. But do I want to watch a 9 minute video on financial aid applications (85% of which is not new info, but that 15% of new material is buried at the 6:46 mark, so I have to watch the entire thing, thus wasting 8.5 minutes of my life on your pompous, self-involved need for the limelight, because video is the only option and there’s no transcript) instead of reading all that info in a 3 page form? No. Seriously, it’s amazing how quickly I will hate you (hate you) if you make me watch a video instead of letting me read. Videos are long, boring, and repetitive. They spend a good 30 seconds to 3 minutes just on a nice opener called “look at this cool special effects I found out I can do”. Then it’s boring, unnecessary intro talk (Hi, I’m Mia, I’m here to talk to you about curling your hair today. Because, you know, curling hair is the cornerstone of a good look, and… – barf!) instead of just cutting to the meat of the issue. I can usually read that same material in 45 seconds (skimming, because that’s really all you need), but a video will take 8 minutes. I never click on YouTube links posted here (especially ones that don’t tell me what they are beforehand), because it means spending 4 minutes trying to get to the joke you could have typed in 15 seconds. Videos just take so much more time out of our lives when we’re trying to make things more efficient.

The rise of YouTube is also the rise of Twitter and Facebook and blogging and Fluther. More and more people turn away from watching to news to reading that one article on the website. Kindles and iPads – ebook readers – are in vogue. And try getting by in college without reading – you’ll fail by the end of the first week. Sorry, but it’s a bit too hip to be square for reading to be on its way out.

“The eye envies the mind”

I love my kindle and I like to listen to books from audible.com on my ipod or iphone while I am doing a mindless task that requires my hands. I have always been an avid reader. I don’t know about kids today though, do they still read? It seems as if virtually every kid I see has ear plugs in, I assume they are listening to music. So I think your question is food for thought when it is directed towards future generations. Probably kids will evolve with a usb 3.0 or higher port on the side of their heads and will just plug a flash drive with a full length novel on it, and zingo, they will assimilate the novel without having to bother reading it!

I’ll give you an example. Please measure the time you need to read and comprehend the following two sentences:

Dreamers think big and start small. Fools think small and start big.

I’d say it took you about 1–2 seconds.

Now suppose someone created a (good) video to convey the same message. How many seconds will it take you to watch such a video?

So will reading become less important than it is now?

No, but reading will complemented by visual media when such media are more efficient to convey a message. A good example is the pre-flight safety demonstration on an airplane. Suppose this wasn’t done visually and passengers would have to read a five-page manual without graphics.

If so, how much less important?

It will be less important to uneducated people. Otherwise, no.

How much should we worry about our kids spending too much time on visual media instead of reading?

A lot. It’s a serious problem, especially for people who like to become part of the knowledge economy and area where most new jobs are created. All young people we hire at our company did a lot of reading before they applied.

Sometimes listening to podcasts instead of reading can make sense too. E.g. during a commute. There are excellent TED talks for example. We can’t watch a video during a commute in a car.

Various forms of media will co-exist.