We are bombarded with images every moment of everyday. Even as I write this I find myself looking at images on the web, watching TV. While doing this, I’m also looking up music, checking facebook and tweeting on the side. Not only has imagery become dominating, but we also have massive amounts of media and information distracting us as well.
This does leave little room for the reading of books to get our entertainment and information, but is the written word dead?
Hardly.
Although, as I see it, our visual culture has cut down on the amount of books being read, I think it has increased the numbers of stories being told. Instead of now sitting down and reading a traditional book, we scour the internet, reading stories of other peoples lives, the experiences they have, living vicariously through the images we see. Globally we are exposed to all different cultures and occurrences. World news is at our fingertips. The images and visuals that we are exposed to each day drive us to read, to explore and to experience stories in a whole new way.
A side comment for anyone who reads this...What do you think the effect of reading fewer books has on the film industry? I've noticed a lot of the movies that come out these days are remakes, and if they aren't remakes, they still aren't original. Many are also based on books, new and old. What do you think of this? Have we lost our ability to write a good story because we have so much information? With the information we have, are our imaginations less flexible?
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