The NEA, like many other observers of trends, blames technology. In 1990 consumers spent 6 percent of their leisure spending on audio, video, computers and software. Now, according to the report, those items account for 24 percent of recreational spending. Book-buying hasn't done that badly, standing at 5.7 percent in 1990 and 5.6 percent in 2002.
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" 'Reading at Risk' merely documents and quantifies a huge cultural transformation that most Americans have already noted -- our society's massive shift toward electronic media for entertainment and information," said Dana Gioia, the poet who is NEA chairman, in the preface to the 60-page study.
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Of the adults surveyed, 95.7 percent preferred watching television, 60 percent preferred attending a movie and 55 percent preferred lifting weights or doing other exercise to reading literature. Even 47 percent chose working in the garden.
The NEA report, which was released at the New York Public Library, laments that having fewer readers shrinks the pool of people who are activists in civic and cultural life. Adults who read literature also did volunteer and charity work, visited art museums and attended performing arts programs, as well as sports events.
1. Jon Husband on February 5, 2005 01:46 PM writes...
I wonder about this too ... and I hope that this comment that I am beginning will be the pre-cursor to a blog post I have been mulling over. Maybe this will help me think it through ... thanks for the space ;-)
Blogging takes time and effort ... and typically we're sitting, at the keyboard and the screen. Skyping (or using VoIP) involves interacting with your computer too, although with Skypeout to cells, of course we can be mobile (and thus out from your space or office and out from in front of the keyboard and screen).
Then, there's podcasting ... and telepresence, and immersive environments, and ... various forms of what people call *convergence* ... all these connectivity-based capabilities coming at us, enabling our interaction. But, is it becoming, or will it be a different form of interaction, especially if *blogging* and blogging-like derivatives penetrate more widely and deeply into workplaces and online business activity.
What of the differences in kinesis between sitting, each of us physically isolated but highly engaged and stimulated, in a room, say, or a cubicle at work, with a thin plastic screen on each wall, blogging and skyping and experiencing some aspects of each others' presence, wearing headsets or earphones ... versus the kinesis of engagement with people in a neighbourhood, doing volunteer work, participating in a range of physical meetings where decisions about actions to take are in process. How can or will the interconnection, interaction and engagement move from isolated individuals to purposeful activity in the *real* world ?
Each (blogging and civic engagement) takes time and physical engagement, and each involves being surrounded by and immersed in an environment, and each of us individually only has so much time in a day or a week. It also takes time and practice to develop skills ... of social interaction, of reflection, of articulate communication ... in each of those environments.
Hey, I'm an active proponent of blogging (driving most of my non-blogging 35 - 55 year-old business friends nuts with my enthusiastic advocacy), and of the widespread distribution of information, opinion and knowledge in service to making much-needed (imo) changes to the purpose(s) and structures of organized purposeful human activity ... but I do think there are real issues with the amount of time spent behind keyboards and screens.
Thus far, I can only see (in aggregate) that this issue will increase in terms of problematic importance.
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