Among cultural studying people, there appears to be a marked decline in habits of solitary, exclusive reading.
They know less and less of literature by heart. They read against a musical background or in company. Almost instinctively, they resent the solipsism, the egotistical claims on space and silence implicit in the classic act of reading. They wish to shut no one out from the emphatic tide of their consciousness. Being something we can listen to personally yet share fully with others at the same moment and in the same place, Hypertext, far more than books, meets the present ideal of participatory response. It is not the 'dog-eared volume' we find in the walker's pocket, but the e-smartphone.
