Odyssey Online

Christine Rosen has published an essay titled “People of the Screen” in the current issue of the New Atlantis, and it is well worth reading.  The essay makes the case for the book, and in some ways, makes the case in ways explored by writers such as Sven Birkerts and Neil Postman.  However, the essay also includes some very incisve writing about such things as Kindles, and, also Rosen makes some interesting observations about how the changes technologies like Kindles change reading. From this, she makes an intersting case about how digital divides are forming not along access to computers lines, but about how people read lines.  The essay speaks to the consequences of the question who is still reading novels? She’s thinking about the necessity of pleasure reading…lines that get one thinking about the differences between writing and word processing, between cursive and word processing, and the extent to which processing anything removes experience from the activity.  Off to microwave a frozen panini for lunch…