I had a father in who was looking for exactly my specialty; Young adult classics. We ran through Jack London, and Mark Twain, and many others, and he always had the same two responses to all my suggestions:
"My son has read that."
"My son hasn't read that, so probably wouldn't be interested."
????
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Does the weatherman ever get tired of being wrong?
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I got sort of a glimmer of how the younger generation views books.
Don't laugh.
I think they think books are kind of quaint. Oldish. Dad and Mom's thing.
I was trying to think of an equivalent from when I was younger, and the only thing I could come up with was models. Models were just fading out as I was growing up -- I made some Big Daddy Roth cars and such, Rat Fink, but mostly it was beginning to fade. Westerns? I don't know, something that just sort of recedes.
When I think of thriving art forms that become hot house flowers, I always think of Opera. So comics and books might become Opera -- you go to Portland or an even bigger city for the sporadic performances. Or Jazz, you have to seek them out in small setting among true believers.
Getting Facebook opened me up to some conversations with 20-Somethings that seemed to spill over into myriad techish things.
I had a sense of what I've called Techishness....Irritation with the sheer volume and my lack of ease with technology and the younger crowds natural immersion into that world. Books are far down the list of media they care about.
Maybe books ARE doomed.
I'm toward the beginning of the Baby Boomers, so there are about 15 years of old fashioned book readers behind me, so I think I can play this out to the end of my career.
Personally, I don't think e-books have had that much impact on the bottomline, yet. I think they will have a HUGE effect, eventually. I read about bookstores going out of business on Shelf Awareness almost every day, and most of them mention that they are quitting because of the paradigm shift, the new technology.
But I think that just a way of saying, "We didn't fail. Who can fight the advent of the new tech? (The Car, (buggies) T.V, (movies) The Internet, (newspapers, etc. etc.) It's pretty handy cover.
I wonder if the old buggy whip makers used to look longingly at their favorite horses, and say, "Gosh, people are really going to miss the liveliness and beauty of the real animals."
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3 comments:
"Irritation with the sheer volume and my lack of ease with technology and the younger crowds natural immersion into that world. Books are far down the list of media they care about."
Reading a book requires sustained attention and effort, something the 20-somethings-and-under seem incapable of. Call them the ADHD Generation.
It's unfortunate, because solving problems of any kind requires sustained attention and effort. I wonder what a society incapable of sustained attention and effort will look like?
I think we're getting a peek at it now, and so far I don't like what I see.
In regards to your "techishness", opinions as to Facebook, Twitter and other forms of youthful online social networking, I am curious to know what your opinion is on emoticons as well as abbreviated forms of text that are in common use.
BDog:
"I wonder what a society incapable of sustained attention and effort will look like?"
Did you ever see a movie called "Idiocracy"? I can barely remember it, but I may not have been paying attention very well. Heh. It might just be the answer to your question.
I don't mind them, as long as I understand them.
I probably should use them myself more often. ; )
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