http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/learning/literacy/do-books-have-a-future.html?playWell, as promised here are my thoughts about the video above.
The first time I watched it, it really was difficult for me to believe what I was hearing. As you all probably know, I am a former educator and a librarian in training, so as you can imagine this video really bothered me at some very fundamental levels. I think I could really rant about this for a while, but let me just share with you some of my favorite quotes from this video with my responses:
The stuff that really matters is a very small part of the book.
I would respond that perhaps a large part of the intellectual merit of reading a book is the challenge of evaluating the “good” in a book, rather than having it told to you. It seems to me (thinking back to me literature classes) that almost everyone has a different opinion about the value of a book. Why would we want this told to us? Also, as I mentioned before, there is real intellectual merit in having to discern what is significant about a text, or as it’s described in the video, the “stuff that really matters.”
No one has to write anything anymore, except at the highest level.
I wish he was a bit more clear about this comment. People write all the time. They write on facebook, on blogs, on flickr, and for magazines, classes, and even for publishing books. I don’t really understand this quote, because it is plainly obvious that people write every day, it is still (despite what the video says) a key form of communication between people.
Video is the new text.
If video is the new text, where is the video I can watch that tells me all about AACR2? Where is the video Jen can watch to prepare for medical school? I should just watch videos instead of reading my texts for class, or watch the video version of the French Revolution (History of the World, anyone)?
Books are not as good as the internet for contemporary works.
I will freely admit that there are massive amounts of information on the internet, and a fair amount of that information is very helpful, but I feel sure that if one performed a study comparing works in print (published in the last 5 years) to works on the internet, books would far outnumber the electronic resources. Even today, much of the information that is published is in book format, not on the internet.
Books... they're just not that important.
If books are not important, what do you say about the Domesday Book? The Book of Kells? The information in books help us to define our cultural identity by giving us information from the past. They contain much of what we have of the collective knowledge of mankind. How are they not important?
Why read his book when he has a blog?
A blog and a book have two completely different intents, with different content. Blogs are far more topical and casual than a book is. A book has a central idea or theme, and is generally written in a more “serious tone.” I really doubt that if you read Malcolm Gladwell’s blog and then read his books, you will feel like you gained the same knowledge and insight from both.
At its core, the problem is that this is simply a reflection of a growing trend in society that individuals (especially younger people) are unwilling to be challenged on any level, especially intellectually. And, if you’ll permit me some gloom, that scares the heck out of me, folks.
What would you say? What do you think about this? I’d love to know!
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