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Keeping Up with Faster...
In an article on pop-culture trade website ICv2.com, Al Kahn, the Chairman of 4Kids Entertainment (best known for the kids show Pokemon) states, "I think manga is a problem because we're in a culture that is not a reading culture. Kid's today don't read." I also mistakenly believed that "kids don't read" when trying to convert the American audience into readers back in the 1980s. It's true that with more and more entertainment storytelling options, kids read fewer books, but I don't believe it's because we're "not in a reading culture." The past 20 years have had significant changes in our culture, society, and lives, thanks largely to technological advances unlike anything else we've seen in history. When in the early 1980s, the world's gears (powered by capitalism and money), were turning by way of synchronous communications' meetings and telephone calls, documentation found its way to offices, schools and homes all over the world by way of what we now call "snail mail," the geek-speak term for the United States Postal Service.
The Postal Service is snail mail today only because
everything now moves much, much faster. Technology has given us
instantaneous messaging, free spontaneous electronic mail, word
processing, faster computers, faster cars, faster access, and faster
foods.
The world has changed dramatically since the invention
of the Heidelberg printing press, and the "book," which is nothing more
than a linear collection of left-brain formulaic language. Americans
believe books are for smart people; books are for learning, still, even in
a hyper-dynamic multimedia world. That's why kids don't read in America,
because it's too slow for today's kids. We're stuck in an old world
mentality of what is "intelligent" and what is "stupid." "Words (books)
are intelligent. Pictures (comic books) are stupid."
There's an episode in the first season of The Simpsons
where Bart is suddenly considered a genius (after switching test papers
with another student), and is enrolled in a school for gifted children.
While in the school's enormous library, he comes across a super-hero comic
book stuffed in between some books. The teacher, appalled by such "trash,"
throws it away. Most of the education world still doesn't see it any
differently today. The modern world passed America by, with Asian
powerhouses being the new world's creative thought-process and global
innovators. We cannot keep up. We cannot learn as fast as the world
changes, thus forcing us to prostrate ourselves to technology (which makes
things faster); and now, completely consumed by that technology, our kids
watch more DVDs, play more video games, and surf the Internet.
However, I'd like to point out that even when kids are
watching, playing or surfing -- they are reading. It's just smaller chunks
of text incorporated into the new interface of learning, the Graphical
User Interface (GUI). There are more words read in any recent Final
Fantasy game than there are in any book; more reading in DVD special
features than in any newspaper, and there's how many billion of pages
indexed now by Google? My son learned how to read at 1 1/2 years old
because I gave him a Macintosh, not with picture books. Suddenly empowered
with his new window/screen of stuff, a driving effort ensued to figure how
to play with it. The GUI is an intriguing and intuitive interface, so he
figured out what the words meant rather quickly.
The GUI will replace the "book" as we know it, not
because "it's prettier to look at," but because we have to. We've maxed
out the traditional channel of learning perception. The human species can
only learn so much, so fast, reading a linear textbook. It just isn't fast
enough anymore. All this new technology, information and content has even
forced higher education (steadfast for 200 years), to succumb to its
power. Recently, the prestigious Indiana State University became the first
institution that made a laptop mandatory acquisition for enrollment. It's
faster to type than to write. It's faster to access data by using a
searching function, rather than checking (and hoping) the index of a book
includes the word.
Dr. Richard Mayer, a psychology professor at the
University of California, has done extensive research concerning
cognition, instruction, and technology in multimedia learning, and thus
proposed a "cognitive theory of multimedia learning." He wanted to replace
the behavioral perspective (what classrooms have been like most of the
last century) on multimedia instruction with a more cognitive and
constructivist approach. The behavioral perspective sees students as
passively absorbing new knowledge, using practice activities, memorization
and curriculum instruction, while a cognitive and constructivist approach
in more "like real life experiences" or "interactive."
When an animation about how a bicycle tire pump works
was presented concurrently with systematic narration, the students
significantly outperformed those who just read a textbook. Additionally,
using spatial contiguity (printed text, with related pictures near or
integrated) students showed significantly better recall and problem
solving skills (faster), than those that just read a textbook. When
reading a book, you're using a single channel of data consumption:
formulaic textual language. When seeing imagery, listening to narration,
and reading words together, as in a GUI (DVDs, games, Internet), you've
opened up three channels of data consumption. Theoretically, you can learn
three times faster.
I presented my Visual Storytelling Workshop for the art
students at a local high school, where one of the librarians was so
excited to show me "the comic book guy" (Neil Gaiman) "Read" poster that
just arrived. I too was excited to see this champion of sequential art
storytelling promoting not only reading, but also sequential art
storytelling, but his listed talents were "Author, Poet, and
Screenwriter," and nothing of comic books.
At first glance, it may appear that this new found
respect for manga, anime, and multimedia would surely improve the
sequential art's reputation in this country, but there is still too much
"old school" in how comic books are perceived. Hollywood isn't in love
with comic books. They are in love with comic book characters and stories,
which as I discovered in doing my research for my recent white paper, only
benefits the exploitation of the character merchandising (which only
happens to include a comic book).
It's not that kids "aren't reading anymore," they're just not reading as many old school books. They're reading the new interface for learning, and not because "it's got all those pretty pictures," but because we have to open up those other two channels of learning consumption, to keep up with instantaneous messaging, spontaneous electronic mail, word processing, faster computers, faster cars, and faster everything.
All content is ©1998, 2005 Anthony C. Caputo. All Rights
Reserved.
Absolutely no reproduction permitted without written permission by author
and/or the respective trademark and copyright holders.
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