In Defense of Books

As any student procrastinating from homework would attest, reading on Facebook is somehow easier and more entertaining than a biology textbook; it is simple to read lines and lines of status updates and relationship changes. This trivial information is easy to comprehend and quickly loses meaning. While Facebook is a far cry from a novel (though, they both have a similar amount of drama), it is an apt illustration for the ease (and lack of permanency) that reading on a screen has versus the more laborious reading of the actual printed word. In "The Future of Reading", Jonah Lehrer's article for Wired web-magazine, he argues that, despite the immutable march towards digitalization of books, there is a distinct loss of effort on the part of the reader.

Lehrer's article is written for a tech-savvy audience, and assumes that the audience is fairly familiar with scientific processes. He writes for a diverse audience that may be as familiar with reading lab reports as web-zines. Therefore, he adopts a distinctly scientific bent in his writing style, making use of specific arrangement while making use of the stases for his own purpose. By doing this, his argument can be read in a more scientific way, and thus gains credibility with his audience.

By saying that Lehrer makes use of the stases does not mean that he adopts a rigid style dictated by each of the stases: fact, definition, cause, value, and policy. He manipulates the ordering to suit his purpose more effectively, beginning with the stasis of fact: "the future of books is digital"; ascends up the stases process to value: digital books are easy; and finally moves onto causal and policy suggestions.

He begins with providing an analogous situation: books are like the FM radio, quaint and cute, but not particularly practical or any more widely used. This gives legitimacy to his earlier statement of fact; like the radio, books are being replaced rapidly by a newer better technology- technology that Lehrer objectively refers to as nothing short of easy and brilliant.

As Lehrer moves onto a statement of value, however, we get a clearer picture of his feelings of books on screen- perhaps it is too easy. He justifies this statement of value with a causal claim of why it is quite so much simpler to read a sentence on screen versus on paper. It is objectively easier to read on typed words on screen than it is to read smudged handwriting, due to the neurological pathways of our brain. The ventral neural highway is responsible for the easy, automatic reading of a written word. A secondary way to read, though, is one that is slower, but more meaningful. This is when the reading pathway used is the dorsal stream, which forces conscious attention to what is being read. This is much less automatic and slower.

Lehrer uses this causal claim to move to his final stases: a policy suggestion. While never suggesting that a mass Kindle-burning, he offers a suggestion to re-engage the dorsal pathways of the brain: make texts more difficult to read. He says of e-readers, "I'd love for them to include a feature that allows us to undo their ease, to make the act of reading just a little bit more difficult [...] Our eyes need to struggle. [...] Only then will we process the text a little bit less unconsiously, with less reliance on the ventral pathway. We won't just scan the words- we will contemplate their meaning." He offers a concrete policy suggestion that is supported by his earlier claims of cause and value.

Lehrer's article gains legitimacy and value by his use of the stases. Instead of merely establishing his a policy suggestion, he works up to it, causing the reader to see the value of his suggestion. He uses the stases to give his claim a factual base, add value to his words and finally to offer a solution. Though, one doubts that Kindle will ever offer the option of smudged ink or faded text- and certainly will never offer complimentary musty book smell- Lehrer makes a valid, well supported argument for the printed word. Even further, his article shows the value of struggling with passages of text over the ease of a 140 character Twitter update, for sometimes it is the difficulty that makes a text meaningful.