The new commercial advertising Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet shows the user flipping screens. The narrator's voice is telling what the Kindle can do with each flip of the screen. It streams movies for you to watch. It contains apps for you to touch and go to. It lets you play games. It plays YouTube videos that people make or attach to Facebook or other social media. It contains programs for you to work in. And then, as if by after-thought, the narrator says, "And, of course, you can read..."
The very reason for Kindle in the first place several years ago has now been relegated to an after-thought because, in order to keep up in the modern world, a user has to do many more important or rewarding jobs on a screen than simply sit, do nothing, and read. The message is that reading is pretty unproductive... which it is in the future... life is interactive, so any device worth its productive weight will be interactive as well. Amazon is right on target following the money path to the future - streaming and allowing people control of what they want to SEE AND DO... oh, and still allowing something passive like reading, too... but it's last, and outmoded, and a really unproductive use of time.
The death warrant for reading and writing will be signed at the close of 2017.
2 comments:
2017? Too soon. Our baby boomer generation must all die off first. Then the two or three generations after us, as well. Far too many of us still read tree-books, and refuse to own anything that requires us to slide a finger across a screen. I figure 2075 may be the more likely day when reading and writing as we know it, and have known it, will be a lost art.
I do follow your logic. There will be die hards for sure. But, those who read and write will fall further and further behind. If the baby boomers continue with reading and writing, they are either retired or they have a really small business clientele. Generation X has fully embraced technology and those younger use technology as first nature, not even second. 2017 is a year in which it will be clear whether one chooses to be lviing in the past or to be following the clear path to the next stage in civilization. By 2075 reading and writing will have gone the way of the German runes and will take a scholar versed in them to translate to the current generation.
Post a Comment