I like how much more prevalent subtitles are now, but I don't think that most people are going to read them. People are astoundingly good at ignoring things they've decided are irrelevant.
> Even then, I think readers overestimate the amount of people that are/were actually reading serious literature. Even when literacy and books were at their peaks, most people were reading pulp novels and other low-end books.
Oh, absolutely. People into 'serious' literature have always been a minority and definitely never close to the average person's experience with the written word. I think what we're seeing is more that less literacy is needed to be functional in society. The average PMC/middle class person in the 1970s needed a higher rate of literacy than they do in 2024 because video used to be a lot more expensive to create and disseminate: I work in corporate training and the videos we create now would have been handbooks or factsheets in the 70s/80s. For domain specific or technical knowledge, the written word was basically the only option for several decades (aside from like...audio tapes, which have their own issues). Housewives used to have to grab different flyers from grocery stores and price compare, everyone had to be able to read maps (with no spoken directions), mechanics had to consult the Giant Car Books, etc. This did present a lot of problems for people who didn't or couldn't reach that level of literacy for whatever reason, and I'm glad those people (e.g. those with dyslexia, those who were forced to read in a language they didn't know well, etc.) have better options now.
> So while I don't really disagree with you per se, I do think it's unnecessarily pessimistic, and it's a better approach to try and approach this new media format with fresh eyes and optimism.
I'm neutral on the shift from a societal perspective. My main point of judgement is more 'our changes are happening because we lack the political will to address issues' rather than the changes themselves. For example, if we want to commit to video being the default form, we should have video literacy classes in the same way we did written literacy: People should know basic video creation techniques, be able to determine what makes a video more/less trustworthy, how to effectively navigate through a video, how to use videos as reference pieces, etc. I'm displeased because the post-literate world is coming about due to a failure of education and governance rather than due to the positives of video. But objectively, the shift from the written word to video isn't any worse than the shift from oral tradition to the written word. It also makes sense since humans learn by imitation and are very visual animals.
I'm personally pessimistic, but that's because I'm visually impaired, so everything being primarily focused on inalterable visuals is a loss for me (whereas an article I can make big text/zoom/print/whatever for accessibility purposes), but I've also been sad about that since Instagram started and made everything about pictures. Video is an improvement there: At least I can follow videos by sound.