ABSTRACT
The proportion of college diplomas awarded in the humanities has plummeted to the lowest level on record. Yet book sales continue near all-time highs. Reading is not failing; traditional cultural institutions built around books are failing. The context in which these institutions developed changed. Today, someone with an Internet connection can access 30–40 million books. The writer’s importance diminishes as access to books increases. New books do not contribute as much value. Instead, readers create more value by choosing books to read and then sharing with their social network.
By the end of the digital revolution, reading will look different from the culture we inherited whose features seem eternal to us. Reading will become one facet of all that happens via social media. The same people who meet to discuss books about a shared interest in an issue can also organize to address that issue.
At some point, the skills and knowledge we gain as educated readers fail us. We confront an environment that they have not prepared us for. We must draw on our sense of pleasure, our intuition, and our imagination. We readers are now entering a new culture of reading whose riches we can barely conceive.
