Imagine (with Apologies to John)
What is the future of reading? Imagine what a book will look like ten, twenty, fifty years in the future. Hard to do, I know.
It may help to imagine the past: some old scribe scratching away at a scroll and muttering, "Those idiots who slice paper into sheets are wrong, wrong, WRONG! People want a book that unrolls in front of their eyes. It's more satisfying."
It doesn't help to realize that we aren't even capable of imaging what possibilities await. Remember the guy who suggested closing the U.S. Patent Office in the 1800's because everything had already been invented? Remember the first time you sat down at a computer and thought, "This is HARD!" (My first meeting with a computer was as a teacher, and some genius/nerd tried to teach us all to write our own programs in whatever code they were using in those days. I remember looking at my friends and rolling my eyes at the foreign-ness of the whole process. I would never spend MY days sedentarily sitting and trying to manipulate mysterious matters! I was right, of course, but I was wrong. Someone else writes the programs, but I spend way too much time on the mysteries!)
Consider the generations that follow us. My niece, a twenty-something, wanted to use my "'puter" every time she came to my house, starting from about age three. I soon learned that she could do things with the 'puter that I had only a dim understanding of. It was like she absorbed technology from the Cyberspace around her. As an adult, texting is second nature to her, writing things down an oddity. I think she read my book, but only because she's a good kid and it was the right thing to do.
So how do we imagine the future of reading? By keeping in mind that change is constant. By remembering that our parents and grandparents couldn't imagine how much the world would change in their lifetimes. And by recognizing that when we consider the future of reading, our statements really should not start with the word "I."
It may help to imagine the past: some old scribe scratching away at a scroll and muttering, "Those idiots who slice paper into sheets are wrong, wrong, WRONG! People want a book that unrolls in front of their eyes. It's more satisfying."
It doesn't help to realize that we aren't even capable of imaging what possibilities await. Remember the guy who suggested closing the U.S. Patent Office in the 1800's because everything had already been invented? Remember the first time you sat down at a computer and thought, "This is HARD!" (My first meeting with a computer was as a teacher, and some genius/nerd tried to teach us all to write our own programs in whatever code they were using in those days. I remember looking at my friends and rolling my eyes at the foreign-ness of the whole process. I would never spend MY days sedentarily sitting and trying to manipulate mysterious matters! I was right, of course, but I was wrong. Someone else writes the programs, but I spend way too much time on the mysteries!)
Consider the generations that follow us. My niece, a twenty-something, wanted to use my "'puter" every time she came to my house, starting from about age three. I soon learned that she could do things with the 'puter that I had only a dim understanding of. It was like she absorbed technology from the Cyberspace around her. As an adult, texting is second nature to her, writing things down an oddity. I think she read my book, but only because she's a good kid and it was the right thing to do.
So how do we imagine the future of reading? By keeping in mind that change is constant. By remembering that our parents and grandparents couldn't imagine how much the world would change in their lifetimes. And by recognizing that when we consider the future of reading, our statements really should not start with the word "I."
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