What Does It Mean to Be Well Read?

Then

Being well read was once a privilege

Go back to somewhere like the 1500s, and if you were well read, you were probably quite a privileged person. Not everyone could read back then. It was an important thing to have.

Then

Information lived in one place

Late 1800s – Early 1900s

Mass literacy arrives

Once mass literacy became a thing and everyone could read, people were arguably a bit better read than we are nowadays — because that is how you got your information. If you wanted to find something out, you went to a library.

The library

Temples of human knowledge

Libraries were the only source of great human information — temples of that which humans have collected over the many centuries.

Now

The takeover

In recent decades, the internet, social media and browsers have taken over, digitising all that information so we can access it on our phones, our laptops and wherever we are.

Then Go to the library The place you went to find something out.

Now Not going at all People don’t really do that anymore — which is a bit of a tragedy.

So where does that leave books? What does being well read mean these days?

The shift

A Renaissance of reading

Literature and reading are, in fact, undergoing a bit of a Renaissance right now. You don’t read a book because you want to find something out necessarily.

These days, with the internet and everything, you read to connect with something human. You read because you love storytelling — and that is the original purpose of books, stories and poems.

The irony

Digital life revived the soul of storytelling

Weirdly, the digitalisation of life has kind of revitalised the original soul of storytelling.

“

I read them because someone long ago had something to say. And I want to hear it. I want to read it.

The thread worth holding

Access to reading is no longer the barrier it once was — attention may be.
The library was never only a database; it was a temple of collected human knowledge.
Digital abundance freed books to be what they always were: storytelling.
A book is a voice from long ago, still waiting to be heard.

This was just an idea that came while walking earlier today — and it felt worth sharing.

If you agree, that’s enough. Have a good one.