The following is from a Boston Globe article reviewing the “To Read or Not to Read” report which can be found here:

http://www.nea.gov/news/news07/TRNR.html

“We know what young people are doing more of: watching television, surfing the Web, listening to their iPods, talking on cellphones, and instant-messaging their friends. But a new report released today by the National Endowment for the Arts makes clear what they’re doing a lot less of: reading.

The report - a 99-page compendium of more than 40 studies by universities, foundations, business groups, and government agencies since 2004 - paints a dire picture of plummeting levels of reading among young people over the past two decades. Among the findings:

Only 30 percent of 13-year-olds read almost every day.

The number of 17-year-olds who never read for pleasure increased from 9 percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004.

Almost half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 never read books for pleasure.”

Maybe this is what Steve Jobs is referring to. It’s bothersome to me that he’s thinking that way since I wrote to him recently requesting that he develop an ebook app for the iPhone. But Steve is Steve and sometimes he sends smoke signals just the opposite of what he does. A while back he said no one would watch videos on an iPod.

I have a funny feeling a smaller device will appear soon that will be a competitor for the Kindle.

Don Smith, Apple Distinguished Educator

I wonder how Jobs would react if someone dismissed Apple by saying, “The whole concept is wrong, people read books, they don’t use Macs.”

The fact is, people watch TV, watch Movies, listen to music, and read books as well.

On another topic, sorry about the posting difficulties you mentioned in an e-mail. A cache-related issue may have caused the post not to register. Robert will be working on such problems, which are associated with others. The real solution could be a move to a new hosting service. Again, my apologies for the difficulty. - David

Of course, Amazon’s core market is people who read lots of books–which is why the Kindle is a good business decision for them. Because te Kindle has switching costs–if you buy paper books, you can shop around to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or your local half-price used bookstore. But once you’re a Kindle owner, it’s just so easy to buy from the Kindle store (although Fictionwise is doing its best to make that an attractive option, too).

I agree that a multifunction Apple tablet at an affordable price, would be a wonderful product. I’ll believe the great price when I see it. One thing Apple has always believed in is premium pricing.

Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com

I agree, ironically movie versions of books like “1984″ and “Farenheit 451″ made me think about this and then started to read more. I hope to read even more when using an e-reader, as I’m quite lazy to move and tired all time by some non-dangerous health problems.

I think people is becoming a lot more stupid and one of the reasons is the excessive use of audiovisual content. People lacks ability to concentrate, processing and assimilate information that isn’t ready to get like in a fast food restaurant. This is making society to becoming a lot worser and, who will be the smart people that will make societies functioning and advancing in technology?

Wasn’t supposed that the evolution of our societies is about the machines will do the hard physical work and we will concentrate into the intellectual work?

And about Steve Jobs, he just want media attention. Don’t care of his words, let him be happy with his Disney shares and looking the “don’t be evil” rebel of Silicon Valley when he’s now one of the (evil) corporative ones at the level of IBM or Microsoft, but with the exception of having a niche market (professionals of audio/video/desktop publishing) that they care reasonably very well.

I’m writing this while taking Jobs at face value. With Apple you never know; Jobs has been known to indulge in his share of disinforming.

Do you mean to tell us that you don’t take everything His Steveness says as gospel, David? I’m shocked!

You may recall that shortly after the introduction of the iPod Jobs made a similar statement about personal video players, something to the effect of, “Nobody wants to watch a movie or TV show on a tiny little screen, so Apple will never make an iPod that supports video.” We all know how well that statement held up over time.

I’m confident we’ll see an Apple tablet before too terribly long, possibly later this year. I found yesterday’s MacWorld announcements rather ho-hum compared to years past; I suspect Apple had hoped to announce the tablet but was unable to do so because it’s not quite ready for prime time yet.

The best evidence that there is, in fact, a tablet under development is an article that appeared last week on Wired’s web site. In discussing the development of the iPhone, the article states, “Apple’s hardware engineers had spent about a year working on touchscreen technology for a tablet PC and had convinced him that they could build a similar interface for a phone.”

Will this product make a great e-reader? Probably. Will it be a dedicated e-reader? No way. Will it be cost-competitive with other dedicated e-readers? Ha!

Apple has always had a strong focus on the educational market, and I predict Jobs will change his tune once e-textbooks begin to appear on the market. The Mac tablet will already be available by then, and Steve may even be willing to produce a reasonably priced, stripped-down version of the tablet to capture market share amongst college students.

Before I move on to my main point regarding reading, I would like to say that no, the new Mac Air would make a terrible ebook reader, if not the worst possible one. Why? Two reasons: 1. The machine costs $1800. 2. The battery cannot be replaced. Would you want your 10-year-old to have that kind of machine for book reading?

Of primary concern is the matter of the younger generation not reading. Sadly true, but the fix isn’t ebooks; rather, the fix is getting teachers and parents to read and to require reading.

My kids are readers (well, they aren’t kids, except to me, any more, the youngest being 26) and I’ll take credit for that, thank you. Why? Because I started reading to them from infancy. Nearly every night I read something to them. When they got old enough, we had 2 family reading sessions every night: the first was with I or my wife reading to everyone else; the second was each of us reading our own book quietly for 30 minutes. Only then could they watch any TV.

As they got older still, we made biweekly trips to the bookstore. The kids were told to pick out any book they wanted to buy. The only requirements were that the book had to be challenging (reading level) and that if bought they had to read it and then provide an oral summary of it before the nextg trip to the bookstore. They were allowed to buy more than 1 book if they could read all of them before the next bookstore trip.

All along, however, the family reading sessions continued, not ending until they were 8 or 9. By that time we had been through Tolkien’s The Hobbit several times (the kids kept asking that it be read to them). My final push to read for them was with their teachers. When the teacher sent home a research assignment, I required the children to go to the library and research it as I had to do in my youth. No googling until they had demonstrated good library research skills.

My kids also had a good example in me. In those days, I read 2-3 books a week; now I’m distracted by the magazines I need to read so I read fewer books over a longer period. But it paid off. My son, for example, reads a couple of books a week — either borrowing from my personal library or buying them at the bookstore.

So to cure the book illiteracy parents and teachers have to insist on old-fashion reading and not on googling or watching TV. We need to accept the challenge because books are knowledge and without knowledge there is no future.

My favorite quote from that article:

“Fiction just doesn’t interest me,” said Bob Ryan, 41, who works for a construction company. “If I’m going to get a story, I’ll get a movie.”

That’s a hell of a lot more people than use a Mac OS X-equipped computer each year, so I’m not sure what he’s complaining about. Compared to the Mac’s market share, this is a huge opportunity for Apple!

Seriously, though. Jobs might want to go into this new fangled invention called the bookstore sometimes. *Somebody* must be buying enough books to keep these huge ass Barnes and Nobles and Borders in business, especially when they have competition in the form of libraries that don’t even charge to read their books! (Damn pirates).