Initially, it comes under threat in a way that doesn’t seem very threatening, people are changing how they’re using the psychotechnology of reading. They’re going from Lectio Divina, a participatory perspectival transformative form of recitation into a silent consumptive model where I’m trying to consume information and knowledge is an inner coherence between my propositions, rather than a transformative conformity to the world.
Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why I (as someone who deeply prefers text-based communication media to audio or visual ones) nevertheless encourage people to actually watch the videos.
It also points to one of the big meta-issues; part of what’s happening is modularization and specialization. Reading used to be a big package deal that got you lots of things, and now it’s a narrow focused tool that does what it does very well, but doesn’t give you the other parts of the package deal. As far as I can tell, we’re better off with rapid silent consumptive reading than just having access to Lectio Divina. But there’s a big price for this in coherence, as all of the various components of your life become necessarily detached from each other so that they can be interchangeable.
Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why I (as someone who deeply prefers text-based communication media to audio or visual ones) nevertheless encourage people to actually watch the videos.
It also points to one of the big meta-issues; part of what’s happening is modularization and specialization. Reading used to be a big package deal that got you lots of things, and now it’s a narrow focused tool that does what it does very well, but doesn’t give you the other parts of the package deal. As far as I can tell, we’re better off with rapid silent consumptive reading than just having access to Lectio Divina. But there’s a big price for this in coherence, as all of the various components of your life become necessarily detached from each other so that they can be interchangeable.