When beginning to analyze the decline of pleasure reading in favor of digital platforms, the initial thoughts that often come up correlate the need for books with the time and era in which print novels seemed to be most popular. As novels were one of the few semi accessible forms of entertainment offered to an individual in the pre digital age, it is easy to make the call of judgment on modern society today and point the finger at the generation of internet dwellers who supposedly spend majority of their day to day lives behind the luminescent screen of their devices instead of the pages of a book. However I think it’s safe to say that this argument like many others crafted by the generations before us, is generally baseless. Too often then not the technological advancements crafted for the modern age have gotten criticism from boomers for its delivery of ease and simplicity. Because we as humans have evolved to a phase of everyday living where computers and the internet are always on hand, the argument of whether or not this has, for a lack of a better term, “dumbed us down” has been prevalent. However I along with the various authors cited in this post will make the case for the age of the internet and its many added benefits. 

The first argument I want to zero in on revolves around the question of: does using a search engine equate to laziness and unintelligence? In Leah Price’s essay What We Talk About When We Talk About Books, she cites an article by Nicholas Carr brashly titled Is Google Making us Stupid? Carr mentions how immersing himself in a book or a lengthy article used to be so easy but in the digital era he found himself getting fidgety, and what was lost wasn’t just the information that he was no longer absorbing, but the taste for being absorbed (Price pg 2) Of course I can’t speak for Carr’s personal feelings regarding his lack of attention span spurred by the influx of cyberspace we have been experiencing for years, but I can say that a person making this argument the general consensus of how all of humanity generally feels, seems a bit injudicious. Yes, life has been made easier when an answer to a question does not involve the drawn out process of going to the local library to search through books and journals, but why is that necessarily a bad thing? Does the notion of taking a supposed shortcut diminish the fact that a person still went out of their way to try to find an answer to a query? Regardless of how the answer was obtained we can’t disregard the fact that knowledge was still acquired and absorbed. What is the need to add unnecessary labor and why does that equate to how intelligent we are? There seems to be a misguided understanding that the internet does more harm than good when it comes to the human psyche. I won’t deny there are frivolous and sometimes harmful assets to the world wide web, but the frivolous nature in particular doesn’t seem to be all that damaging to humans in the grand scheme of things. Lynn Coady touches on this in her novel Who Needs Books? when addressing the idea of the “serious writer” (Coady pg 11) although I found her take to be prevalent when it comes to readers as well. Coady’s tongue and cheek criticism of the “serious writer” was quite poignant as I too have also felt that the distinction between academics and “low brow” entertainment to be quite pretentious. It is quite possible to be well read and academically inclined and still participate in frivolous entertainment such as reality tv and internet memes. Assuming your life to a standard that is particular to your brand and profession has always seemed a bit try -hard in my opinion. Moreover I also appreciated the not so subtle judgment to the idea that writers can only be taken seriously if they devote their life to writing and nothing else. Coady is quick to call out how the overall privilege of one’s lifestyle is a big proponent to that (Coady pg 38). I would also like to connect this back to readers as well. Perhaps those that deem the internet a shortcut have never given thought to the fact that many don’t have the time available to get to the library and scour through various texts to get what they need. Maybe they have forgotten that the average individual probably has a job and social/familial obligations that prevent them from going through the aforementioned process. In other cases it may very well be possible that printed materials are not accessible to them at all. Coady brings this up again when mentioning Margaret Atwood’s anecdote about the co-founder of Wattpad recounting to her the time an old man from an African village had written a letter thanking the site for being a platform to read and share stories. The village itself did not have access to schools, libraries, landlines or books (Coady pg 45). Even though it is a bit jarring to think that there are regions in the world that have access to mobile devices and Wi-Fi and not educational institutions and books, we can choose to see this as a somewhat positive thing. The internet and the age of digital literacy has brought us resources that were not previously accounted for. Today almost anyone can have a world of information available at all times which in itself has become a pivotal benefit to the well being of our minds. Without the internet I can’t imagine knowing half the things I do now. 

Now that we’ve established the web as being a valuable resource, let’s center this argument around books and its evolution. Another point that has come up has been the question of- Can reading a novel on a tech based platform make us want to completely disregard the need for a printed physical copy? And what does that say for the legacy of printed novels? Price brings up that the debate between print vs. electronic has shifted between generations but the previous consensus has revolved around fear. Fear of printed literature being forgotten and written off as an old medium. However rather than being referred to as an old medium, Price believes that it’s a format being reinvented (pg 4 Price). This reinvention allows for the reader to engage with the text in ways that wouldn’t otherwise be possible with print. Take for instance the app based novel Pry referenced by Jessica Pressman in The Novel in the Digital Age. The composition of the novel is not traditionally served in a format that allows the reader to flip through pages to read a text. Instead readers use the “forefinger and thumb to pry open or pinch close a virtual window, a space on the surface of the screen” (Pressman, 9). The nuances and physical participation of the reader can transcend written text in new and creative ways. Ways that can very well encourage more people to read and engage with literature. Alan Liu in his essay From Reading to Social Computing praises the web as “one of the most powerful publishing platforms ever invented”. The internet acts as a halfway point for author and reader as an individual is actively using text to convey what they want from the web. Community reading and writing is more pervasive than ever thanks to twitter threads and comment sections. A thought or opinion is written for the public sphere to then elaborate, relate or argue on. Individuals can now even use social media sites like Facebook to model a text e.g. students using Facebook to convey Romeo and Juliet. This puts a fresh take on the classic play, one that may be more intriguing to the youth of today. 

I want to end this post by saying that I don’t think the death of the print novel is something that’s going to happen immediately. However I will say the internet is here to stay and will only get more revolutionized. Instead of harking back to the days of yesteryear we should embrace change as it comes and look for the value in the new rather than reminiscing on the old. If you are someone who wishes to continue your foray into print literature then that is your own prerogative. At the end of the day we have always chosen what to engage in. Let’s not blame the web for we as humans choose to consume.