Reflect on what `reading` means in the 21st century.

If we are to wrestle McLuhan 's turn of phrase from him we can hear the medium is the message ' applying to the text . Shed the technological aspects of hot and cool media and we can thresh loose the kernel of thought that reads : The mode of conveyance will itself transform the work . The pleasures of the text are diverse and when read , heard , or witnessed one is engaged in a unique form of experiencing text

The text as read , as orated , or as performed are fundamentally discrete ways of engaging a

work . Furthermore , reading is distinct from the latter enactions of text while reading is private and internal , oration and theatre are both performative . As such , there is a subtle energy to reading some have seen this as a way of gaining inwardness . It is not for nothing that religions have long made devotional use of literature as spiritual exercise par excellence . It is particular to reading that one is practiced in introspection , one takes up the book with a responsibility that is not present with a public performance . While it could be suggested that a recorded text offers the same text I would counter that it is no longer the same text . Firstly , the context has been changed one is not required to give the same amount of attention to the spoken word - in reading there is no text without the act of reading itself . Relatedly , in spoken word the pace of the reading cannot match the subjective...