For someone who makes their living from being a writer, it’s surprising how little I think about the written word as a concept. (For someone who reads as much as I do, it’s weird, as well; but that might be in part because my head makes a split between what I read and what other people read otherwise I get oddly self-conscious; I can’t explain it.) Nonetheless, I’ve been thinking about the written word, and the past, and about how they interrelate recently.
Specifically, I’ve been asking myself if people read more now. I was thinking about the fact that I can remember life before not just email and the internet — because I’m old — but I can also remember life before texting, because I’m very old. (Was it really called SMS messaging back in the day, or is that something that we just all agreed to collectively hallucinate after awhile because it sounds old-fashioned and awkward?)
I don’t mean this in the crotchety-old-man sense, but there was a period of time when the primary mode of communication amongst friends was verbal, not written, and then… writing just started to take over: texts, emails, DMs, and so on. We all started writing more, and we all started reading more. There have been all kinds of discussions about whether or not the actual writing itself has downgraded language — remember the weird but seemingly legitimate panic surrounding “text speak”? — but I’m not sure I’ve ever read any serious study about to what extent people just started actually reading more often as a result, even if it was just emails and texts, rather than newspapers, letters, or “literature,” as much of a moving target as that last thing truly is.
Of course, history will make the final decisions surrounding what counts and what doesn’t, as it always does; it’s an unreliable beast at best, but part of me is oddly excited at the prospect of, centuries from now, texts between friends and emails with abbreviations and in-jokes and references that no-one else could ever understand will be held up as “proof” of a literacy that has been lost to the ages, and a society that treasured the written word even as we, living in this moment, never ever consider the possibility.