TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

TeleRead, Obama, and text literacy vs. Kevin Kelly’s ’screen literacy’

By David Rothman

Wired Magazine’s Kevin Kelly enraged John Updike with an essay on the snippetization of books. But Updike hasn’t seen anything yet. Now Kelly is at it again with a New York Times piece on Becoming Screen Literate. "We are now in the middle of a second Gutenberg shift—from book fluency to screen fluency, from literacy to visuality." Kelly writes, and he actually is rather pleased.

Meanwhile, as if to back up Kelly, Read/Write Web ran Is You Tube the Next Google?, a few days earlier. Alex Iskold mentioned a Nokia man whose nine-year-old  searches the Web through YouTube rather than the text-oriented Google. What does that say? No guesses needed. Iskold says: "Kids no longer learn about the world by reading text." And how about the fact that no book-related apps show in in another R/W Web post, 17 Christmas Gift Ideas for Geeky Kids?

Balancing the two literacies

I myself am not against image literacy, and in fact I’ve often run YouTubes in the TeleRead blog. I’ll use one here, in fact—to give people a feel for Kelly as a tech seer. Still, I do worry that text literacy will be left behind, and that just as with Wall Street, we can’t trust ourselves to the vagaries of the marketplace. Balance, please! We need well-stocked national digital libraries of e-books and other items, rather than an image-centric approach.

Of equal or maybe even greater importance, these collections ought to be well-integrated with local schools and libraries, and with American households.That means a comprehensive approach, everything from different and better teacher training to family literacy programs.

The Obama angle

Hello, Barack Obama? Isn’t it time for educators and policymakers not just to pander to the video craze, but rather to strengthen support for old-fashioned literacy in new ways. And I don’t just mean teaching children how to read corporate manuals. How about an appreciation of the powers of narrative? Or ideas, as developed at book length? You yourself are no stranger to books.

While images can communicate ideas, they cannot do so with the depth, fluidity and efficiency that text can in so many cases. Video is fine for learning many aspects of auto mechanics. But, especially if used excessively, is it the fastest way to learn the history of the United States? Or the nuances of advanced technology? And how about Kelly’s YouTube? What if an essay had been the main show? He could have imparted his ideas better and faster than with the video alone.

Writing off the masses?

So let’s not gleefully proclaim the retreat of text. To encourage a movement away from it is to write off the masses in the most elitist of ways.

Perhaps education-minded foundations such as MacArthur should be spending less money on trendy technologies such as VR and more on the optimal presentation and  popularization of text among young people.

A literacy triangle

Meanwhile Obama’s policymakers shouldn’t just wait for the nonprofit sector to wake up. Plan ahead now for a sturdy triangle to foster literacy. The three legs should be  (1) content, (2) proper teaching methods and other people-related efforts and (3) appropriate technology for displaying e-books. I’ve been mentioning those components for years, and they are also on the mind of Glenn Bull, an instructional technology professor at the University of Virginia. Perhaps policymakers need to worry less about the opinions of Wired and the like, and more about those of clueful educators.

The commercial angle: As I’ve observed, along with others, the book business should  use technology to create new markets, as opposed to just shifting readers from P to E (imagine what e-books could achieve in developing countries). In fact, a prominent industry consultant just made that observation on the Reading 2.0 list. And I couldn’t agree more. TeleRead would be one way to do this. And, no, I don’t think it should replace the private sector. We need a dual strategy to assure maximum freedom of expression and diversity of content.

A holistic approach, please: We shouldn’t isolate literacy from other issues. For example, Washington could help popularize hardware fit not just for e-books and other text, but also for filling out health-related forms—and helping patients track information on pill use, nutrition and other practicalities, customized for them through a government-industry initiative. Maybe the right technology could even simplify tax forms. It isn’t enough to bring broadband to American communities; let’s help children and parents make the best use of it, rather than dumbing themselves down with YouTubes in place of books.

Detail: Nothing against Kelly personally—I’ve admired many of his observations over the years. In fact, I’d side mostly with him in the snippetization debate.

Related: Digital Promise moves ahead in D.C.: Basis for TeleRead-style efforts in time? Library e-books to benefit in major way? and TeleRead-related writings in the Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report and an MIT Press information science collection.