The Imagined Reader

Authors:

Pages: 493-506
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54664/TGYM6175

Abstract:

In what ways is the reader imagined today? When thinking about reading, especially of literature, and of its future, which we are making today, are we suffering from lack of imagination? Are we stuck in anxiety and techno-dystopian visions lamenting a lost idyllic past of deep reading? The focus of the analysis is the imagined reader – disappearing, absent or misplaced by technology – as represented in the 2019 novel Machines Like Me by the British writer Ian McEwan, which appeared ahead of the rapid development and mass application of artificial intelligence, and in the short story “The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling” by Ted Chiang published in 2013. Reflecting on these texts offers ways of looking at the role of stories – shared through oral storytelling and later through reading – as the first substantial information technology developed by humans to build large-scale networks between them, which, according to Yuval Harari’s most recent book Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI (2024) has been crucial for making Homo sapiens the most powerful of all animal species.

Keywords:

readers, storytelling, lifelogging, memory, identity, humanoids, artificial intelligence, Ian McEwan, Ted Chiang

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