David Brooks, "What Our Words Tell Us": Are Books Still Being Read?

I have three children, ages 25, 21 and 18. At the moment, not one of them is reading a book for pleasure. Texting? Yes. Surfing the Internet? Yes. Reading a book? No.

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "What Our Words Tell Us" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/opinion/brooks-what-our-words-tell-us.html?_r=0), David Brooks tells us that the words found in books during different periods can attest to cultural shifts. Brooks writes:

"About two years ago, the folks at Google released a database of 5.2 million books published between 1500 and 2008. You can type a search word into the database and find out how frequently different words were used at different epochs.

The database doesn’t tell you how the words were used; it just tells you how frequently they were used. Still, results can reveal interesting cultural shifts. For example, somebody typed the word “cocaine” into the search engine and found that the word was surprisingly common in the Victorian era. Then it gradually declined during the 20th century until around 1970, when usage skyrocketed.

. . . .

Evidence from crude data sets like these are prone to confirmation bias. People see patterns they already believe in. Maybe I’ve done that here. But these gradual shifts in language reflect tectonic shifts in culture. We write less about community bonds and obligations because they’re less central to our lives."

Yet another fascinating, ever so valuable exercise in data mining.

Community bonds and obligations have become "less central to our lives"? Probably, given that we live in an age of narcissism, from the president on down.

Is the Google database of any real value going ahead? Probably not. In my humble experience, young people no longer read books.