The return of the books
As I have pointed out on occasion, unlike fleeting information, the book strengthens with the passage of
time, constituting a vehicle of reflective knowledge.
By Guillermo Jaim Etcheverry*
Every time the declining trend in reading is
mentioned, it is argued that, on the contrary, there
has never been as much reading as in our time (1).
What is not made clear is that, almost exclusively,
current reading material consists of short SMS or
WhatsApp messages, emails, tweets or, in the best of
cases, some page (2) on the Internet. Isolated phrases,
often poorly constructed and poorly written, constitute
our daily intellectual nourishment (3).
That is why it has caused such an impact that the
creator of Facebook, the technological guru Mark
Zuckerberg – 30 years old and a fortune estimated at
30 billion dollars – has set himself the goal of reading
two books a month for 2015 ( 4).
He has invited his millions of followers to
accompany him, a category that is currently equivalent
to “friends.” Although he found an important echo
among them, not everyone follows him in the exotic
adventure he proposes.
But what is truly interesting are the reasons on which
he bases his decision.
Says Zuckerberg: “I'm excited about the challenge
of reading. I have discovered that reading books
provides important intellectual satisfaction. Books
allow you to explore a topic completely, through a
deeper immersion than most current media makes
possible. I hope to be able to shift my media diet
more and more toward reading books” (5).
Unique properties
The habitual use of technological resources, of which
he has been one of the main architects, has led
Zuckerberg to rediscover the properties of the book.
Even the most inveterate technophiles must have
harbored the suspicion that a quick glance in a virtual
medium does not allow the acquisition of real
knowledge similar to that achieved by reading an in-
depth study carried out by an expert in the field.
One is tempted to imagine what would have
happened in a world in which, after 700 years of the
Internet, someone had invented the book in the 1990s.
The fact that instead of trawling through oceans of
semi-reliable information it turned out to be possible to
have a safe, portable and inexpensive source of
knowledge presented by someone who knows what it is
about and how to present it through correct writing,
would have been considered a true miracle and
celebrated. as a great advance for humanity.
By pointing out the fact that “books allow us to
explore a topic completely through a deeper
immersion than most current media makes possible”
(6), Zuckerberg reformulates one of the essential
characteristics of the book.
It is about its ability to organize and structure
knowledge, which is why the book constitutes a
powerful line of defense of knowledge against the
advance of information, which is nothing more than a
fragmentary set of experiences not related to each other
and whose only prestige derives from novelty.
As I have pointed out on occasion, unlike fleeting
information, the book strengthens with the passage of
time, constituting a vehicle of reflective knowledge.
Value our experiences not for the momentary appeal
of facts, but for the permanence of their meaning.
Above all, it gives us back the value of time,
devastated by the immediacy of information.
Although in a confusing way, when looking at books
in a library we sense that the quiet voices they contain
want to draw our attention to tell us about the deep
meaning of our lives.
We perceive that there is something in them that
could give order and meaning to the human experience,
transcending the everyday.
Question of culture
Some time ago, the American thinker Daniel
Boorstin rightly pointed out that sustaining the vitality of
the book today “is affirming the permanence of
civilization in the face of the speed of the immediate.”
It is that our civilization identifies itself by its books.
A house without books is, perhaps, a refuge, but not a
house. Children and young people who do not read
great novels may be trained, but not educated (7).
Acquiring skills with new technologies today
constitutes an essential tool for living, as is managing
money and preparing for personal relationships. But
it has nothing to do with culture (8).
Screens help to obtain information in a simple and
instantaneous way and, above all, they offer
entertainment, sometimes not harmful.
Precisely, the rise of modern technological tools
linked to fleeting experiences is explained by the
contemporary discredit of the effort.
This same horror of effort explains the decline of
reading, because reading a book requires making an
intellectual effort that today few are willing to
undertake.
Reflection time
Reading is a formative task, because reading – a
habit that is acquired during childhood and
adolescence – makes us reflective and rational, it
teaches us to write and speak (9). Above all, it
encourages us to meditate, to develop our imagination.
It is no coincidence that some children, when asked
about what they feel when they read, respond: “It's as if
we were dreaming!”
When he mentions that books allow a “deeper
immersion,” Zuckerberg demonstrates that he has
perceived the importance of what I have sometimes
called “slow time,” the dimension of which we are
losing to the rhythm of the video clip that our
existences have become ( 10).
That time is linked to reflection and imagination; In
short, with the ability to think about the world and to
think about ourselves.
Our young people must be introduced to this
temporal dimension because, in addition to being
disciplined consumers, they deserve to be creators.
Creating means acquiring the habit of entering the
quiet slow time, as well as the ability to settle into it
comfortably before acting.
Precisely, the revaluation of reading books is based
on the conviction that it represents a gateway to that
intrinsically human realm of slowness.
*Former rector of the National University of Buenos Aires