By, Sarah Langan 

_{Author's Note: The below is the direct result of watching way too much Star Trek at a formative age. The Borg! They're here already! You're next! Also, there is a fair amount of talking out my butt. Please swallow your grain of salt now. - SL}

I keep hearing that people don’t read anymore. That kids don’t value words because they’ve got access to more immediate pleasures. As media becomes ubiquitous and its content uniform, we’re directing our own evolution toward a species that operates by hive mind. Room for difference narrows. Art dies, and the anonymous machine supplants our conscience, subverts our humanity. Instead of gym classes, we’ve got the Nintendo Wii. Instead of quiet contemplation, which affords us the time to construct intelligent ideas, we can Google, see what other people think, and mimic what has already been discovered, often without comprehension. We don’t think anymore. We only communicate, and adopt ideas fashioned by the Greeks two thousand years ago, only less effectively.

“Idiocracy.” “Brazil.” “Radio Nowhere.” But this is the worst-case scenario. I worry about it a lot, but that’s probably because I’m a worrier. The opposite is just as easily true. Democratization of information brings difference, and a free exchange of unique ideas that advance society, like the French salons of the Enlightenment (though hopefully to less catastrophic ends). Machines become the repository for our memories, so that we can focus solely on cognition. It’s hard to say what changes technology will bring, and the unknown is always scary.

Out of last year’s ten bestsellers in Japan, five were originally cell phone novels written mostly by first-time authors. They were love stories that tended to lack characterization, setting, and description, so that readers unfamiliar with those specificities never felt excluded. Celebrity Rehab is to Arrested Development as cell phone novels are to One Hundred Years of Solitude. When I first read the article about these phone books in The New York Times. I wondered if it was time to turn off my laptop, and find a field to plow. Why bother learning a craft, when a twenty-year old who’s never seen a semi-colon can do your job in a tenth the time? Remember vaudeville? I don’t. Freakin’ Japan!

But such reasoning is specious. I’m reminded of that nut carrying the “end of the world” sandwich board who hung out near ground zero in the weeks following 9-11. Yeah, that stinker really did do that. I still wish I’d kicked him. What did he know? His socks didn’t even match.

Doomsayers have heralded the end of humanity since humanity began, but for all that, we seem okay. People probably read more in this century than ever before, and reading has become democratized; it’s not just for white men anymore. The written word has indeed changed our lives. So has television, radio, mass production, the middle class (now shrinking), electricity, toilet paper, the list goes on. And they didn’t just change our lives, they changed us. We’re creatures of our own creation.

Loneliness is the disease, and our species has long striven for the cure. Media like the written word approximate our ideal form of communication, but until we all become psychics or reach singularity, they’ll never hit the target; they’ll just keep getting closer (or, paradoxically, further away). So yes, phone novels and other innovations might marginalize paper novels, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Such is the way of change. Let’s be honest, some of the American bestsellers (Bridges of Madison County, anyone?) might as well be cell phone novels. And besides, maybe these young Japanese women, now that they have book deals, will pen the next classic.

I think we can rest easy so long as we’re willing to adapt. Writers have inherent value. Aside from research scientists, they’re the only people I know who can sit still for hours, and think. Thinking is the job the rest of the world is trying to avoid by talking on the phone, and surfing the internet, and running around like chickens with their heads cut off. It’s hard, and really frustrating. It always has been. The human brain accounts for about 2% of human body weight, but consumes about 20% of the total energy in the body at rest. When actually in use, it burns even more energy. Thinking is like running a marathon all the time.

If, one hundred years from now, the novel becomes obsolete, we’ll still find work and even fulfillment. The skills used for writing are rare, and translate into every medium, from stockbroker to sitcom writer. Nonetheless, I expect that the novel will remain because it’s unique. So far, electronic mediums haven’t duplicated its ability to thoroughly examine a specific subject, and evoke the same depth of emotion. What we’ve seen instead is novelty and marketing ploys. People will always visit the Colosseum, but that doesn’t mean they can’t tell the difference between entertainment and art.

Then again, changes are coming. Cell phone novels. The Amazon Kindle. Readers who will eventually revise their favorite authors’ text, and write their own “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.” We can all see it on the horizon. When Edward R. Murrow made the leap from radio to television he called it, potentially, “the world’s greatest classroom.” As writers, perhaps we ought to get ready to make that same kind of leap, so that as change happens, we can affect the outcome.

Sarah Langan is the author of the Bram Stoker Award-nominated novels The Keeper and The Missing. Her next book, Audrey's Door, is due in bookstores in 2009. Learn more about Sarah at her official author website and visit her on MySpace. 

MUSE is the collective term for novelists Deborah LeBlanc, Sarah Langan, Alexandra Sokoloff and Sarah Pinborough. Visit these dark dames at their official website.