by Alex Tabisher
The more I encourage young people to achieve literacy through reading, the more I seem to fall behind in my efforts.
Most young people are growing up in an age where instant gratification is the new religion. The days of measured progress through a novel or research tract are long gone. The magic of holding, and smelling a book has been replaced by digital dexterity.
This plaint probably dates me as a dinosaur in an age of rapidly expanding technology. But I am disturbed by the dwindling importance of effort. I suppose it started with the mechanical adding machine and escalated to the wizardry of instant access provided by today’s techno-advances. The slower processes of trial and error, lengthy cognitive engagement and deep meaningful reflection have been relegated to the museum.
Scientists speed helter-skelter from one lithium battery-powered simulation to the next in a rush to arrive at solutions to problems which they created in the first place and are now besetting mankind. Dare I suggest that deforestation cannot be slowed by the speed of digital simulation. Digital projection and speed of calculations are not equal to the force that through the green fuse drives the flower, or the force of my message. We hear you, Dylan Thomas. Or do we?
I recall with some sadness and horror the short-comings in the research that culminated in the tragic thalidomide babies. Now we are chasing the cure for Covid-19. All I see are statistics and more statistics that are sometimes factual and sometimes digital simulation and projection. Who can ignore the danger of a misplaced minus sign perpetrated under the imperative for speed and accelerated application?
I am not remotely suggesting that we can stop the tsunami of technological progress.
It might even enable us to resurrect some precious species lost to extinction. I defer to the need for speed, but I insist on the need to read.
We must not abandon the stupendous potential of the human brain and sacrifice it on the altar of artificial intelligence. We must allow the slower natural cognitive functions and thought process their rightful place in the research arena. The space is crowded with the newer research methodologies with altered agendas.
It took us a long time to mess up the natural world.
Maybe we need to slow down in order to speed up the redress. Perhaps the art of reading at a more leisurely pace could give us time to cool our fevered brains.
I am not making a case of opting for one scenario against another. We could achieve effective synthesis by combining the old and the new, the known and the unknown.
Do not dismiss the musty tome that sits on your bookshelf awaiting the gnarled and patient finger that will turn its hoary pages. Revisit the older epistemologies and mythologies. And relish in the reassurance that a book doesn’t have a battery that can run down. It is still accessible even during the modern blight of load-shedding.
* Literally Yours is a weekly column from Cape Argus reader Alex Tabisher. He can be contacted on email by [email protected]
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.
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