/lit/ - Literature

Reading picrel right now, freshly released, but only in Polish. The title is 'After writing'.

We're in the post-literary era where most humans moved from reading to watching and the technology is pushing towards ever more direct forms of experience transfers. The closest reference we have for this is the leap from verbal to nominal culture with the advent of writing few thousand years ago, and the process we're in right now brings us from nominal to adjectival - and this happens through youtube, porn, vr, and whatever comes next, like direct neural links and the singularity.

As for those claiming that literacy is on historical peak and that people read on average more than ever - yes, and no. If we take reading seriously, people never read much, and neither do they read now. That literacy people reference is purely communicational (twitter, insstant messaging, press) and almost entirely non-existent among 'leaders' like politicians and entrepreneurs (although one could argue it never has in these groups). Even modern academia pushes people away from reading - doctoral candidates don't have time to read much beyond their professional circlejerk, while early teaching and learning are being gradually relegated to newer technologies, both more accessible and more profitable. If entertainment was evee the domain of literature, it has long moved on.

If the limit for this process constitutes a gain from the literary culture is anyone's guess. The answer from an erudite reader is that it is a total tragedy. To people raised in the nominal culture of written word these movements can feel nothing short of barbaric. The reality is that it doesn't matter and there is probably little reason for sensationalism.