The people who actually read “originals” will be rare, and they’ll have insights others lack, and enjoy experiences others forgo—but the era in which being “well-read” is a proxy for being educated or intelligent will largely be over. It will be difficult to separate the deep readers from the superficial ones; perhaps, if A.I.-assisted reading... See more

have seen the decline in reading as the closing of the “Gutenberg Parenthesis”—a period of history, inaugurated by the invention of the printing press, during which a structured ecosystem of published print ruled. The internet, the theory went, closed the parenthesis by returning us to a more free-flowing, decentralized, and conversational mode of... See more