I Read Where I Am. Exploring New Information Cultures

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We are street readers. Look at us, info junk dealers, as we zip through the telephone, scan a newspaper we’ve just read, leaf through a magazine. We are the new generation of readers. Not dumber, just faster. We whiz through three lives at once. Let’s be honest: reading has become a different experience. Reading has become looking and vice versa. Information has become tactile. You don’t have to remember anything, you just look it up. Could it be that the average person (still) doesn’t like reading? Can you call what people do on Facebook and Twitter reading? Absorbing books and newspapers was something from which you traditionally became wiser, because unusual opinions, special thoughts, new developments, and fantasies were revealed. But there have always been good and bad books. Quality and pulp have always existed.

We are info junkies. People don’t know where to draw the line and, in today’s consumer society, are constantly fighting for control. Information, following food and the environment, may be next in line for an analysis on sustainable development. Information has become a consumer product because it is linked to the form in which it appears. New platforms and formats are appearing with greater frequency on the market. Text, video, sound, and graphics intermingle. Everybody is busy answering, uploading.

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