Technology quote by Lawrence Clark Powell

"We are the children of a technological age. We have found streamlined ways of doing much of our routine work. Printing is no longer the only way of reproducing books. Reading them, however, has not changed"

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Technological progress has transformed the ways we produce, distribute, and consume information, yet the inner act of reading remains stubbornly traditional. Machines shorten labor, workflows become frictionless, books are replicated through screens and networks, but the meeting between a mind and a sequence of words still requires the same patience, attention, and imaginative labor it always has. The surface has modernized; the core is ancient.

Reading does not merely decode symbols; it builds meaning across time and silence. It asks for stillness in a culture optimized for motion, for sustained focus in an economy that monetizes interruption. Faster reproduction does not produce faster understanding. A page, whether inked or illuminated by pixels, is still a threshold the reader must cross deliberately. The brain’s slow negotiation with nuance, ambiguity, and inference cannot be automated.

This distinction matters for culture and education. If we mistake access for comprehension, indexes for insight, highlights for mastery, we erode the very skill that gives technology its point: the ability to think carefully with others’ minds. Innovations that widen access are a civic good; they democratize the library. But their promise depends on readers trained to dwell, to question, to summon images and analogies from within. Reading’s tools may be new, yet its ethics, empathy, patience, accountability to evidence, are unchanged.

Design and policy should honor these constants. Interfaces ought to reduce cognitive noise, institutions should defend time and spaces for immersion, and pedagogy must cultivate deep reading rather than mere skimming. The future of books is plural, but the future of reading is singular: a person wrestling with language to make sense of the world and themselves. Technology can place a million texts at a fingertip; only the reader can turn them into knowledge.

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About the Author

Lawrence Clark Powell This quote is written / told by Lawrence Clark Powell between September 6, 1906 and March 14, 2001. He was a famous author from USA, the quote is categorized under the topic Technology. The author also have 6 other quotes.
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