Text lasts. It’s not platform-dependant, you don’t just get it from one source, read it in one place, under­stand it in one way. It is not depen­dent on tech­nol­ogy: it is what we make tech­nol­ogy out of. Code is text, it is the fun­da­men­tal nature of tech­nol­ogy. We’ve been try­ing for decades, since the advent of hyper­text fic­tion, of media-rich CD-ROMs, to enhance the expe­ri­ence of lit­er­a­ture with mul­ti­me­dia. And it has failed, every time.

Yet we are ter­ri­fied that in the dig­i­tal age, peo­ple are con­stantly dis­tracted. That they’re shal­lower, lazier, more daz­zled. If they are, then the text is not speak­ing clearly enough. We are not speak­ing clearly enough. Like over-stuffed atten­dees at a dull ban­quet, the mind wan­ders. We are ter­ri­fied that peo­ple are dumb­ing down, and so we pro­vide them with ever dumber enter­tain­ment. We sell them ever greater dis­trac­tions, hop­ing to daz­zle them further.