While the form and content of books may evolve, their essence and function will remain unchanged—“the book will remain what it is”[1]. This is the view expressed by renowned literary figures Jean-Claude Carrière[2] and Umberto Eco[3] in their 2009 dialogue series titled This is Not the End of the Book.
What stands out is that beyond defending book culture and the practice of reading, their discussion introduces a once-unthinkable scenario. Just 25 years ago, such a title would have seemed nonsensical. Today, however, it’s a concept that resonates with many, given recent cultural and technological shifts.
The adventures of homo videns
In the cultural sphere, the most prominent trend of recent decades—one that leaves its mark on many phenomena of today’s world and helps us better understand them—is the gradual shift from a traditional culture of the written word, inherited from modernity, to a culture of the image, shaped by the digital age. Is this an objective trend, a new and indifferent wave of history, a transformation of human nature itself? Or is it a social phenomenon influenced by many factors—yet happening, in part, with our own consent?
Clues to answering this question can be found in the way two contemporary authors managed, at a certain point, to revive the public’s appetite for reading—among both adults and children: J. R. R. Tolkien and J. K. Rowling. Yet their appeal and popularity stemmed largely from the potential to adapt their works for the screen. When people hear “The Lord of the Rings” or “Harry Potter,” what comes to mind are scenes from the films, posters, advertisements, DVDs, comic books, characters turned into toys, tattoos, decorations, and video games—rather than specific passages from the novels themselves.
The vast possibilities offered by digitised imagery have unleashed the imagination. It’s a kind of new revolution occurring in people’s minds, fueled by a nostalgia for the imaginative world of childhood. This helps explain the type of novels that generate a buzz today. Far fewer people have read or even heard of Orhan Pamuk, a Nobel Prize winner in Literature, compared to the swarm of fantasy book authors[4] whose works are ripe for film adaptation, animation, or gaming. And the growing accessibility of such content, thanks to rapid technological advancement, makes this genre go “viral.” There’s no comparable media pathway for profound literary works like The Brothers Karamazov or Nobody’s Boy. These classics are slowly fading into obscurity as the generations who once viewed them as essential pillars of cultural literacy pass on. If it’s now said that a person doesn’t exist unless they’re on Facebook, what hope is left for Cuore, White Fang, or Uncle Tom’s Cabin?
Beyond the entertainment value, the escapism, and the relaxation that this image-driven era offers, there are also drawbacks worth considering. For instance, we’re handed fantastical worlds that are technically dazzling—but created by others—and we consume them passively, even lazily. (Hence the popularity of countless Hollywood remakes of classic stories, from Alexander the Great to dragon legends, from Merlin the Wizard to Norse myths, from Star Wars to versions of the Apocalypse.)
Yet these spectacular visual productions rarely lead viewers back to the original stories. They don’t spark curiosity about the authentic content, the deeper layers of meaning or emotion. Any “traditional” reader can tell that these remakes drift far from the wise and subtle core of the original tales—the lessons woven between the pages that require thought to uncover and heart to absorb. The dazzling special effects may captivate the eye, but the viewer walks away spiritually untouched—unlike the reader who once emerged enriched from the pages of a book.
And the suspicion that we’re witnessing a broader decline in interest for meaningful, soul-nourishing reading is something even publishers are starting to confirm. At the latest book fair, I overheard several of them lamenting: “There are plenty of visitors at the booths, but most just come to socialise…”
The individual reduced to the crowd
This is yet another insidious effect of mass culture and the all-encompassing commercialisation that defines our time. Experts observing the early stages of mass communication have noted its negative effect: transforming society into a collection of fragmented audiences with no real civic, class, or labour cohesion. These were passive consumers of the dominant media of the day—radio, cinema, mass press, and especially television[5].
Over the decades, with the explosion of new media, those early effects have deepened, and new ones have emerged. As everything becomes a commodity, the most marketable products appear to be entertainment, adrenaline-fueled experiences, and artificial spirituality. We now speak of the “spectacle society” and the “spectacle state,”[6] each with its own set of troubling consequences: an obsession with managing public image—whether personal, national, or institutional—at the expense of genuine improvement; debates reduced to flashy performances aimed more at scandal than at meaningful exchange or consensus; televised political leadership reduced to tiresome rhetoric; electoral marketing that threatens the very core of democracy; celebrities replacing moral and intellectual role models; and the social periphery thrust into the spotlight in an exaggerated and often tasteless way. Meanwhile, a culture of physicality and unchecked impulses spills from screens into everyday life.
In all of this, impressions dominate and obscure the essence of events. What we’re left with are holograms of realities that remain fundamentally inaccessible. And here lie the limits of the image: beneath its seductive variety of forms, it remains superficial—a “shell,” confined to appearances. And appearances, as we know, are the very medium through which we become captive to illusion, utopia, manipulation, falsehood, seduction, deception, and complicity.
How can such an effect—the tyranny of appearances—take hold in our advanced 21st century, a time when one would expect humanity to be progressing in rationality? A possible answer lies in human nature, as pointed out by anthropologists who warn: “A new dimension of reality is emerging through the universality of the spectacle, and man becomes essentially a gaze, at the expense of all other senses. Images become the world (mass media, high technology, photography, video…).”[7]
So, is our world being impoverished, reduced to the daily avalanche of images? Where does the power of these images come from? If we want to probe deeper into the origins of this phenomenon, we must listen to what experts tell us—but also pay closer attention to the world around us and, most importantly, examine ourselves.
There are scholars of image and imagination who argue that the goal of this form of communication is to provoke increasingly intense sensations, to evoke powerful emotions and deliver memorable bits of information[8]—not to stimulate thought, clarity, reason, logic, refined speech, or intellectual and moral models.
The postmodern era has diluted what modernity once defined as core values—widely accepted meanings, criteria, and a singular truth. Today, we see a proliferation of mini-values and pseudo-moral preferences tailored to fragmented audiences. Feeding these is an “inflation of imagery”[9] that promotes them—just think of the flood of imported TV show formats that would have been shocking 25 years ago. Now, they attract their own audiences, drawn to on-air fights between in-laws, televised betrayals, marriages arranged in TV studios, hair-pulling, profanity, squalid living conditions, celebrity affairs, glitz and grime, public exposés, and exhibitionism.
This too offers insight into the current state of human nature: the monument of Reason, built over centuries of Western tradition, risks ringing hollow today if rational thought is no longer nurtured and applied where it belongs. No one is born rational—it is something that must be taught and cultivated.
But what happens if we abandon reason, argumentation, critical thinking, and expertise? Constructive dialogue, mutual understanding, and civility begin to vanish. Each person clings to their own truth, rejecting all others. We’ve already witnessed what this leads to—such as when a powerful head of state justified a war against an Arab country by invoking a crusade against the “Axis of Evil.” Or in how multiculturalism now faces obstacles in daily life, when diversity is promoted at all costs. One example is Germany’s ongoing struggle to determine how much freedom of action to grant Muslim Turks—how many social, administrative, aesthetic, health-related, or communal concessions are too many.
Quo vadis, homine?
Understanding the dangerously strong grip that images hold over us—how they cater only to impulses, emotions, and fleeting tastes, while dulling reason and moral judgment—raises a crucial question: how can we control their influence in our lives?
A recent experience left me unsettled. On a train, a mother sat down across from me with her two-and-a-half-year-old son, who was crying and repeating a single word: “ganga.” He ignored his father, who was trying to say goodbye, and his grandparents, who waved to him through the window. The moment he received the “ganga”—a digital tablet with games—he quieted down and became completely absorbed. For the next three hours, nothing else interested him. When his mother pointed out things from the passing landscape, he touched the window with the same gesture he used on the tablet, as if trying to swipe the scenery away and replace it with something else.
I imagined this child growing up… and then thought of the classic children’s books I’ve saved for my grandson—books he will likely never open.
What will happen to future generations if this culture of the image continues to push reason, common sense—and even reality—out of children’s education and social development? What kind of minds will they have if they shy away from the formative pause of reading, the effort of reflection, the practice of debate and reasoned dialogue, and instead gravitate toward technical ease and the pleasures of the “iconosphere”—the world of images?
One expert offers a stark warning: “If the video-child becomes self-fulfilled as a video-dependent individual (the first phase), then that video-dependent individual will later (in the second phase) become a poor citizen, one who poorly supports the democratic city and the common good.”
Other thinkers go further, viewing captivity within the iconosphere as a tragedy of the human condition[10]. The captive individual becomes alienated—not only from others and from society, but also from themselves. They no longer know who they are, because they no longer give themselves the time to reflect, to explore their personality, to develop their abilities, or to strengthen their character. Their relationships become shallow, and they condemn themselves to a painful solitude. Even solitude itself offers no peace—boredom drives them back into the world, only to face new failures.
Advanced technologies may offer pleasures, but they do not bring joy. This disconnect leads to depression, rooted in a lack of self-understanding. A new trend has emerged in psychoanalysis: young people with vocabularies too limited to express what they feel or what’s wrong with them, making meaningful cooperation with therapists difficult. They retreat into alternate realities and virtual identities, “overwhelmed with images,” their inner lives stuck in a constant “influx of the mass-media.”[11]
Perhaps this explains the unprecedented phenomenon in which individuals marry video game characters, objects, animals—or even themselves.
For many, the ideal of life is self-realisation—the pursuit of one’s highest potential, the fulfillment of personal talents and worthy initiatives over a lifetime. Yet in the absence of self-knowledge, true self-realisation becomes impossible. And even for those who may not consciously strive for it, there is still something universally at stake: the chance for happiness. When people do not know themselves, when they suppress their individuality and the growth it could bring, and when their relationships with others remain superficial, unhappiness becomes all but inevitable.
It may not be coincidental that the country with the highest suicide rate among children and young people is hyper-technologised Japan.
Still, some thinkers argue that even though the moral and philosophical culture of modernity appears to be crumbling under the weight of the digital world, the outcome need not be bleak. Whether it turns out to be a happy or tragic ending will depend on the key actors of this technological age.[12]
Here we can begin to sense our role—those of us confined to various passive audiences—to act in a constructive way, by (re)becoming proactive members of the communities we live in, and by (re)activating our role as members of civil society, capable of influencing today’s media and cultural landscape. We can choose to uphold authentic values and reject false ones—or at the very least, become more discerning when it comes to productions that come in alluring packaging but offer little in terms of moral, intellectual, or cultural substance. We can also strive to empathise more deeply with others and make a genuine effort to help those around us.
“After all, culture is something we cultivate. But be careful—what we cultivate is what we become,”[13] warned Hieromonk Rafail Noica. He advocated a return to the culture of the Spirit, to wisdom of divine origin, to genuine spirituality.
Indeed, the most dangerous trap in today’s image-driven culture may be that of false spirituality—because it could be the final one, the point of no return. The Apostle Paul described it with striking clarity: “…their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:21–22). Fortunately, the remedy for such folly is within reach. It doesn’t require heroic feats of intellect or a frantic dash through libraries. It begins with a sincere turning toward one guide that promises life in abundance: the Book of books.