The Golden Age

The golden age of reading

The English language has surpassed six hundred thousand words in its vocabulary, and it keeps growing due to the introduction and expansion of technology and science. The English language has always had a main source from which it derived its words. For example, words such as “machine” and “routine” are French derived and have retained their original spelling as it was meant to indicate the users of these words were well educated and travelled. There are also words such as “doubt” and “debt” that have been re-latinized from Old French, in an attempt to return the characteristic of the English language to the classical roots (Greek and Latin).
Nowadays, the main source of new words is technology. Words such as
[1] Authors were now able to see their works being shared across the world, and multiplied into hundreds of thousands of copies, whilst readers were able to share their reading experiences with each other readers who read another copy of the same book.
We are at the pinnacle of technological and social advancements, and yet are condescended by “older generations” as the generation who reads the least, and rather spends time surfing the web, and accessing other entertaining forms of media, and technology. We are criticized so much that it is even feared that we will be the generation who “destroys” our languages through the use of “incorrect” abbreviations and neologisms, and this fear has only gotten worse as the Oxford Dictionary has officially added the words “lolz” and “mwahaha” to their list.
Let me make it clear that we are currently at the golden age of reading, as we have more and more platforms through which to engage the readers in us. Furthermore new platforms such as Tablet PCs, computers and kindles offer a more user-rich experience for the readers as they are now also able to interact with the texts they read by adding digital comments or searching online for interpretations and analysis of these
In today’s age, we have become more and more demanding of interactive tasks, which is why we may feel that a book is too stagnant and less conveying than other forms of modern media. The “older generations” understand this, up to an extent, but then go onto think that the other forms of media, such as social networks, video sharing sites and digital devices distract us from the task of reading and get us hooked onto unproductive and non-beneficial tasks such as chatting, blogging, and social networking. This is not untrue, but it must be understood that these tasks consist of exchange of information which is done through reading and writing (or typing) which inevitably improves one’s proficiency in