Originally Posted by Exoparadapsyphobia

I've been reading Fahrenheit 451 for the 3rd time now so I thought this might be an interesting question, since the books main concept is describing how a futuristic iliterate America will be when people have completely disregarded books as evil and twisted.

Readers of this book now more than ever are seeing this prophecy come true as new technology is created and new forms of unintelligable entertainment become more numerous and easier to access, prompting today's youth and even some older generations to throw away more time consuming and intelectual pass times like reading for video games, TV or partying.

It's sad, but I think eventually reading books will be completely abandoned as as an acceptable form of entertainment and looked at as only an annoying requirement in school. It's already happening and has been for awhile, and I'm subjected to proof of this transition several times a week; if you sit in a classroom and read a book, you'll probably get a wide eyed stare from someone and they'll ask, "You like to read? No one does that anymore". I get gawked at whenever I take out a book that's even been assigned to everyone else outside of my English class.

But if reading isn't completely abandoned by society, I expect that writers themselves will be so influenced by the direction our generation is taking they'll eventually start dumbing down the complexity of their storylines, relevance of messages and narrow their vocabularies so someone might pick one up. Eventually making books just as unintelligable as what might replace them entirely.

Agree or disagree?