Why the Internet Won’t Ruin Literary Culture

By Jason Boog 

wikipediahours.jpgIn a NY Times interview over the weekend, novelist Gary Shteyngart quipped, “I don’t know how to read anymore. I can only read 20 or 30 words at a time before taking out my iPhone and caressing it and snuggling with it.”

His new novel takes place in an unhappy future where the Internet and digital books have destroyed literary culture. At the same time, one Publishers Weekly editor is worried about burnout in a digital world.

To combat all this doom and gloom, we uncovered a remarkable graphic created by author David McCandless to illustrate how much time we waste on television compared to how much time it took for dedicated Internet writers to build Wikipedia–visualizing an awesome statistic from Clay Shirky’s new book.

The image above is the tip of the iceberg. Follow this link to see the whole, inspiring graphic. Stare at the image for a few minutes. If more authors worked together online instead of spending time watching television, we could write some amazing things.