{"id":14257,"date":"2026-07-08T10:12:04","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T17:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=14257"},"modified":"2026-07-09T10:15:53","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T17:15:53","slug":"bye-bye-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2026\/07\/08\/bye-bye-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Bye-bye Books?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/2026\/08\/reading-crisis-postliterate-age\/687618\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">from The Atlantic<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">THE END OF READING IS HERE<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Optimists once believed that universal literacy was inevitable. Now it seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/author\/rose-horowitch\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Rose Horowitch<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.theatlantic.com\/thumbor\/7X_z2NNTfKdW1de1XuNyDjX9Ydk=\/0x87:2972x3802\/648x810\/media\/img\/2026\/07\/07\/WEL_Horowitch_OpenerNewAnnaUPDate\/original.jpg\" alt=\"illustration with cover of book 'Anna Karenina' disintegrating into digital noise on black background\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Wordsworth Editions.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Twenty-three hundred years ago, the legend goes, King Ptolemy I of Egypt asked his court adviser to assemble a comprehensive collection of the world\u2019s written works. Ptolemy, who had served under Alexander the Great, envisioned a library that would safeguard the sum total of humanity\u2019s knowledge. His successors inherited this mandate. Royal forces ransacked every ship that arrived at Alexandria, searching for scrolls. These were stored at the Mouseion, a shrine to the Muses modeled after Aristotle\u2019s Lyceum. Aristotle\u2019s own book collection was said to be among the holdings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Much of the history of the Library of Alexandria has been lost. But we know that it was the site of many of the premodern world\u2019s greatest intellectual achievements. The king paid scholars to live and work in the library, and the collection was available to anyone \u201ceager to study, an encouragement for the entire city to gain wisdom,\u201d a visiting Greek rhetorician wrote. It was at the library that Eratosthenes calculated Earth\u2019s circumference and Zenodotus edited the earliest manuscripts of Homer\u2019s epics. Euclid, who wrote the\u00a0<em>Elements<\/em>\u00a0of geometry, may have studied there as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[ <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/2026\/08\/reading-crisis-postliterate-age\/687618\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">click to continue reading at The Atlantic<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from The Atlantic THE END OF READING IS HERE Optimists once believed that universal literacy was inevitable. Now it seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history. By\u00a0Rose Horowitch Twenty-three hundred years ago, the legend goes, King Ptolemy I of Egypt asked his court adviser to assemble a comprehensive [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14257"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14259,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14257\/revisions\/14259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}