“For some people, the very idea of reading a book… or butchering your own meat” (8)
I think the people that believe reading has become silly and old-fashioned are wrong. While I can see their side, reading still offers in-depth and creative sources of information and ideas that could not be found on the Internet. The Internet gives relevant information, but not as in depth as books. Since books require deep focus and attention, the author can fully develop ideas with a lot of evidence. On the Internet, since reading requires short bursts of focus, the author has less time to make a point. Also the relation to butchering your own meat or sewing your own shirts seems a little stretched for me. Doing both of those activities is pointless, because there are others that can do it for you as their job. But reading still offers important information on a specific topic that the Internet may not be able to offer you in the way that a seamstress can give you a shirt, or a butcher, meat.
“The lack of word separation, combined with the absence of … buzzing with neural activity” (61)
I would never read if books were written like this. As much as I dislike reading now, if there were no spaces, I would just hate it. The word spacing allows for an easier flow, making the reading more understandable. I could also see some problems occurring if there are no spaces in the text. If it reaches the end of a page halfway through a word, then it would continue on the next line, confusing everyone. Once word spacing was developed, two scribes could split the long line of continuous print into different words based on where they broke up the line. The fact that reading was a puzzle is difficult and would make ideas hard to comprehend. To me, the spacing gives rhythm to the sentence so I just wonder how readers sounded the sentences out to make them flow with no spacing.
