Rose Horowitz begins her excellent essay in The Atlantic — The End of Reading is Here — with an explanation of what happened to the Library of Alexandria, an enormous collection of books and manuscripts from the ancient world. It was the zip drive of knowledge of 200-300 BC. Yes, there was a terrible fire in 48 BC, but the biggest culprit was neglect. Bugs and mold got to the manuscripts. By 500 AD, it was gone.
Is there where we are going, Horowitz asks. Are we entering a post-literate society?
Schools don’t assign full books to students anymore. College professors can’t assign long articles anymore. Kids are glued to their phones, doomscrolling for hours.
Our knowledge isn’t confined to biodegradable paper. We’re digital now. We don’t need to actually read Plato’s The Cave in book form. We can get the bullet points from AI, and, if necessary, The Cave can be read online from thousands of different sources.
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