This is quite a fine piece by Michael Dirda:
The Future of the Humanities: Reading
As technology advances, doomsaying remains constant.
HUMANITIES, November/December 2015 | Volume 36, Number 6
Reading always seems to be in crisis. Two and half millennia ago,
Socrates inveighed against the written word because it undermined memory
and confused data with wisdom. When the codex—the bound book—appeared,
some conservative Romans almost certainly went around complaining, ‘What
was wrong with scrolls? They were good enough for Horace and Cicero.’
Gutenberg’s press gradually undercut the market for illuminated
manuscripts. Aldus Manutius, inventor of the pocket-sized book, rendered
huge folios a specialty item.
Read it all here.
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