aerhardt

I agree with the sentiment that we tend to misrepresent the culture of mass societies, as if at one point in time there were droves of people reading Aristotle. But the ability to read and our transition to an oral or post-literate culture is very much affecting elites too. There is pretty good evidence when you compare contemporary histories. Or if you live in a bourgeois milieu, you just need to ask around.

I don't think that reading necessarily makes you a better person. I've met a good amount of people of the highest moral dignity who do not read. But on the whole, reading helps build competence - moral and technical - and create a sense of shared culture. Going back to an "oral culture" is nothing but a regression.

A viral article in The Atlantic [1] shows evidence and testimony that kids at elite universities simply can't read anymore. I've seen the claim repeated in many other places and looking around me I believe it. Those kids are not replacing Dostoevsky or Aristotle with more compact versions of it.

The airport book industry is indeed full of books that could be fit in ten pages. But there's a universe of useful - potentially life-changing - books beyond that, and not only in the humanities. Some modern technical books justify their length. I seriously doubt that something like The Data Warehouse Toolkit can be replaced by reading piecemeal blogposts online.

Same goes for history, I sincerely doubt you can properly learn it in depth without reading long-form. In my experience, people who only listen to history podcasts or consume 10-minute videos tend to have a much poorer command of the facts and of the broader motions of history.