When MTV and the music video dawned, '80s singer/songwriter Joe Jackson warned about the effect of limiting the boundaries of the viewer's imagination with images.
"Things which used to count, such as being a good composer, player, or singer, are getting lost in the desperate rush to visualize everything. ... One result of this is that artists are now being signed for their video potential rather than for their musical talent." (And those prophetic words were spoken a couple decades before "American Idol.")
How can a child grow up without a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses" to take down and read on a summer afternoon? Or "Grimm's Fairy Tales"? Or any of the Harry Potter series?
I don't believe reading will ever really die, there will always be people like me and you who like few things better than curling up with a really good book. And after all, you're reading this, aren't you?
But there's no denying we're just not a word-centric society anymore, if, indeed, we ever were. And yes, I am aware of the irony that "word-centric" is in itself not a word. But even when more people read, it's not as though everyone was going around reading Stevenson and Grimm to each other. There's always been romance novels and other trashy books.
I'm afraid the writer of the commentary is just, well, see my headline.
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