I
go to libraries because they are the ocean.
The book has now ceased to be the root-metaphor of the age; the screen
has taken its place. The alphabetic text has become one
of many modes of encoding something, now called "the
message." In retrospect, the combination of those elements that from
Guternberg to the transistor had fostered bookishness appears as a singularity
of this one major period, characteristic of one - namely, western - society.
Bookish reading can now clearly be recognized as an epochal phenomenon and not as a logically necessary step in the progress toward the rational use of the alphabet; as one mode of interaction with the written page among several; as a particular vocation among many, to be cultivated by some, leaving other modes to others. The coexistence of distinct syles of reading would be nothing new [...]. In order that a new asceticism of reading may come to flower, we must first recognize that the bookish "classical" reading of the last 450 years is only one among several ways of using alphabetic techniques.
