I tend to go through stages of book reading and I'm in the midst of one of those stages right now; having just finished reading Life Stripped Bare (Leo Hickman) and Eats Shoots and Leaves (Lynne Truss) and just beginning Making Sense of Generation (Bob Mayo et. al.) and Stories We Could Tell (Tony Parsons). Those books I've just read I found most enjoyably and not just because of the content; there is something special about the printed press which makes a book or a newspaper better than reading a blog or any other website. Baring that in mind I particularly liked this section of the last chapter of Eats Shoots and Leaves,
"Having grown up as readers of the printed word (and possibly even scribblers in the margins), we may take for granted the processes involved in the traditional activity of reading - so let us remind ourselves. The printed word is presented to us in a linear way, with syntax supreme in conveying the sense of the words in their order. We read privately, mentally listening to the writers voice and translating the writers thoughts.
The book remains static, fixed; the reader journeys through it. Picking up the book in the first place entails an active persuit of understanding. Holding the book, we are aware of posterity and continuity. Knowing that the printed word is always edited, typeset and proof-read before it reaches us, we appreciate its literary authority. Having paid money for it (often), we have a sense of investment and a pride of ownership, not to mention a feeling of general virtue.
All these conditions for reading are overturned by the new technologies. Information is presented to us in a non-linear way, through an exponential series of lateral associations. The internet is a public 'space' which you visit, and even inhabit; its product is inherently impersonal and disembodied. Scrolling documents is the opposite of reading: your eyes remain static, while material roles past. Despite all opportunities to 'interact', we read material from the internet entirely passively because all of the interesting associative thinking has already been done on our behalf.
Electronic media is intrinsically ephemeral, and are open to perpetual revision, and work quite strenuously against any sort of historical perception. The opposite of edited, the material on the internet is unmediated, except by the technology itself. And having no price, it has questionable value. Finally, you can't write comments in the margins of your screen to be discovered by another reader fifty years down the line."
For those of us that are Christians of the emergent order, at it's best I guess that is what makes reading the Bible special, you don't just read it, you interact with it you play with it, you are in the crowd as Jesus walks by, you are a Jew- or for that matter a Canaanite. Anyway, I'm off; more books to read!
P.s. corrections in punctuation on this post will not be welcome
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