George Steiner tells us that the
medium is the message.
If this is the case, then
what is it in fact we are dealing with when faced with the two dimensional realm
of the screen? Are we blessed with the ability to
transcend distance, time, and
arduous effort with efficiency and ease? How does this play into the process
whereby we assimilate
literate ideas through the process of careful and analytical
reading? If in fact we are not faced with the concrete reality of the page, the very
material essence of words, then are we not willingly participating in the wholesale
dissolution of our literate selves?
We must begin with the assumption that reading is sacred, and that it is
part and parcel to being human. Following this statement to its logical conclusion,
we must realize that without the act of reading, we would cease to have that very
thing which sets us apart from everything else. Is the two dimensional screen,
then, different in function, (where it is obviously different in form) from the
printed page?
The only conclusion we can draw from this is that in fact we are
losing the page, and the attendant increase in literate interiority, in favor of a "click-
on, click-off" sense of text and the death of literacy.