The Future of Reading: A Warning from the Past
Hellooo from parent land, where plans are but aborted hopes and broken dreams. Instead of writing last month’s newsletter, I was nursing a sick family (thanks, daycare!) and ironing out the kinks for the new semester’s classes. September was the first time in a few years (ever?) that I missed a Genius Loci newsletter and it… wasn’t a big deal? A few of you wrote in asking if everything was okay (thank you!), but I’m sure most of you didn’t care as much as me.
In today’s missive, a note on the future of reading and some personal updates. I also wonder if food is the new angle in travel narratives and remind you that the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards is now accepting nominations.
The Future of Reading
The year was 1994. I was a pimple-faced teenager, already adept at the inner workings of Windows 3.1 and trying to wreak havoc by writing rudimentary .bat file viruses in DOS, no doubt under the influence of Doritos and Mountain Dew. It was around that time that I first started dialing into BBS’s, trying to download warez and (at my brother’s behest), spicy images. Of course, I’d get kicked off the computer so someone in my family could chat with strangers in chat rooms. In those days, the power and promise of the internet had begun to shine its light on the world, not unlike a sun having already broken the horizon.
At that point in time, I couldn’t have called myself a reader. I don’t think I had read a book cover to cover, choose-your-own-adventure books or comic books notwithstanding. So I couldn’t have begun to think about what impact the internet would have on the culture of books and reading. While the TV had long been attacked as destroying our minds (the boob-tube, the idiot box, etc.), computers symbolized promise (the information age) and intelligence (being called a “computer nerd” was always a backhanded compliment). The worst problem with the computer had to do with its physical impact with posture, carpal tunnel, or eyesight (the monitor is bad for your eyes, they saying went).
Yet, as early as 1994, a prescient thinker had thought about the impact of the digital world on the experience of reading. That year, Sven Birkerts published his book The Gutenberg Elegies, a wonderfully prescient warning of digital culture’s impact on reading — and its damaging side effects.
Birkerts argued that “electronic culture” had already ushered in a decline in reading. It helped chip away at the joy of reading, getting lost in books. It too reduced our attention and patience, “shattered (our) faith in institutions,” obliterated familiar points of cultural reference, and on and on in what might be read as a laundry list of the symptoms that plague us today.
When my students suck their teeth because I ask them to read a 2-page excerpt from some guy named Dante or Kant, this is the future Birkerts feared.
For Birkerts, “electronic culture” also creates a new mass culture — “a tide of the homogenous” or “the highly seductive glitter of mass-produced entertainment.” This echoes how some of the post-war Frankfurt School thinkers called cinemas “distraction factories,” and the point about homogeneity is the focus of Kyle Chayka’s recent book Filter World. In his book, Chayka charts how social media and the algorithm moves culture towards a mass, cookie-cutter culture — a homogenization of not just aesthetics but of ideas. Branded as a flattening of culture, and the delights of the weird, this dystopian version of a monoculture is too much.
Back to Sven Birkerts. He suggested that in the digital age, the network is a symbol of lateral connections - “vistas of information that stretch in effortlessly in every direction.” And with that, humans have been experiencing a disconnection with the other axis — depth, verticality, transcendence. What we gain in breadth, we lose in depth. This is a loss of meaning, a loss of digging deep, a loss of rigor. To be sure, the average human is reading far more today than they ever have — but the reading is superficial. Quantity is up, but quality is way down. Reading is not intensive, or deep. The quality of words matters, especially when the alternative to Faulkner is, say, Facebook status updates.
This horizontal movement, this perpetual act of surface-skimming, is not just a byproduct of the world we find ourselves in. It has been designed this way by our Big Tech overlords. This is the distraction factory. These are the weapons of mass distractions, the digital slot machines, we all carry in our pockets.
In his book Stolen Focus, Johann Hari discusses how our ability to focus and concentrate has been compromised by digital distractions and smartphones. Even staying up a bit later than normal, no-thanks to smartphone addiction, impacts our ability to focus, think, and retain information in a way that is similar to consuming alcohol.
One might say: Smart phone. Dumb human.
What is to be done?
It should be obvious. Unplug. Spend less time on devices. Recommit to the physical, the real. Turn away from the short form; turn towards the long form. Consume culture with intention. And — for the love of god — spend as little time as possible on social media.
Personal Updates
I posted a 9-month update on my 365-day photography journal project on YouTube.
The impulse to disconnect more is perhaps part of the motivation behind me taking more photos on film this year than on digital. Fewer screens, fewer distractions, fewer worries.
I was born in the era of film photography. The first photo I ever took was on a disposable camera, a picture of my mother posing next to a Corvette. I can thus say with pride that I’m a film-native shooter. I was buying and shooting film before it became trendy; because back then, it was the only option.
For me shooting film isn’t about the nostalgia or even “the look of film.” Rather, shooting film is about the materiality of it. It is about slowing down. It is about shooting more mindfully because the price (and mechanics) of film. It is about the inability to see your images immediately. It feels more natural, less rushed. Perhaps this is why film is surging in popularity, and why camera companies like Fuji and Leica have produced digital cameras with “film simulations” and designed to allow you to cover the screen (Fujifilm’s X-Pro3) or designed without any LCD screen or menus at all (Leica’s M11-D).
My book proposal is coming along, albeit slowly. Check out my creator’s log for those updates.
Food and Travel Narratives
Is The Best American Travel Writing series back? Maybe.
The beloved Best American Travel Writing series has merged with the Best America Food Writing. While this might seem like a tactical move to save the two titles amid shrinking profits (see the note above about the future of reading), to say nothing about scoring some goodwill points from the industry and readers, I think this tells you all you need to know about travel literature and journalism in the age of the smartphone. Food is as important to culture as it is to travel, but to look at travel solely through the lens of food is not unlike appreciating a symphony by listening to one instrument. Sure, it can be an interesting proposition. But there is so much missing.
Food has long been important in travel narratives, but there seems to be a newfound interest in food-based travel narratives.
As reported by Talking Travel Writing, the publisher DK Living has created a new imprint called DK Red that focuses on narrative nonfiction. It will publish travel and food narratives. As reported by Publishers Weekly, DK Living director Liz Gough said in a statement: “From cooking and travel to health and wellbeing and beyond, DK Red will enable us to continue to expand our portfolio, invest in more talent, and dive headlong into new areas to reach more readers around the world." One of DK’s recent forays into long-form travel narratives is a book called You Deserve Good Gelato, written by social media influencer Kacie Rose. It is an NYT Bestseller.
Travel Book of the Year 2025
The Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year is now open for submissions. If you published a travel book between 1 November 2023 and 31 October 2024, or are a reader and simply want to nominate one, please submit the title to Stanfords for consideration. The deadline for submission is 4 November 2024. See Stanfords social media for submission information.