On Reading and Writing—Some First Thoughts

I’ve just recently come across a series of blogs and posts on the internet that report studies on the value of solitude; of “deep reading” and reflection in contrast to skimming or reading sound-bites and tweets; of writing as real work that is not just an activity of a solitary individual, but rather is a “highly social process” involving creativity, reflection, and discussion; and of setting aside uninterrupted time without trying to multitask while managing the distractions of cell phones or web-page surfing.

It all makes me think about my own work, and about writing this blog. Many well-wishers have told me not to make my posts too long—that people these days read everything on their cell phones or tablets, and “on the fly.”  When they see a long column of text, they’ll just flit onto the next tweet or news item that they can assimilate in-between texting with their friends without running into the next telephone pole while walking down the sidewalk.

Good advice, perhaps.  But something in me rebels.  I can’t possibly squeeze what I want to write about into tweets, headlines, and sound-bites.  The ideas that make it up are interconnected, and come together into a whole that is more than the sum of its parts.  My readers will need some relatively uninterrupted “quality time” to take it in, just as I do to write it.

But maybe all is not lost.  The above posts that I linked to illustrate how some writers and thinkers use the very media that are blamed for our distracting, distractible lives to comment on and critique that very problem.  There seems to be a widespread feeling abroad that we’re doomed to be victims of our own technologies; but these critics say that we don’t have to be.  That’s one of the central tenets of this blog too.  We can choose when and how to use the machines we make.  Computers, cell phones, robotics, are powerful tools.  But they are tools, and as such they can augment rather than fragment or displace our lives.  It’s our call—just like it’s always our call to choose what kind of economy we’ll live and work within.

Oops! This post is getting too long.  Better quit for now.