This is a very interesting excerpt from Steven Johnson's book "Everything Bad is Good for You." I think it raises a very good point.

It presents the hypothetical situation, in which video games were invented before books, and imagines how the mainstream media and boomer generation would bash books in the same way they do video games in the real world. It makes a great point of how people will always bash new things they don't understand, like comics and rock n roll, and that its all based on perspective.

[B][U]Here's what a fox news headline might read in this other universe:[/U][/B]
“Reading books chronically understimulates the senses. Unlike the long-standing tradition of game playing—which engages the child in a vivid, three-dimensional world filled with moving images and musical soundscapes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movements—books are simply a barren string of words on the page.

“Books are also tragically isolating. While games have for many years engaged the young in complex social relationships with their peers, building and exploring worlds together, books force the child to sequester him- or herself in a quiet space, shut off from interaction with other children. These new ‘libraries’ that have arisen in recent years to facilitate reading activities are a frightening sight: dozens of young children, normally so vivacious and socially interactive, sitting alone in cubicles, reading silently, oblivious to their peers.

“But perhaps the most dangerous property of these books is the fact that they follow a fixed linear path. You can’t control their narratives in any fashion—you simply sit back and have the story dictated to you. This risks instilling a general passivity in our children, making them feel as though they’re powerless to change their circumstances. Reading is not an active, participatory process; it’s a submissive one. The book readers of the younger generation are learning to ‘follow the plot’ instead of learning to lead.”

Now the above "article" actually seems logical, right? But remember, it would be written by people who have never read a book and are "judging it by it's cover" if you will.

here's a video of it as well: (with some setences absent)

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpet4TJi41A&feature=related[/url]