Manuel Marino posted a troublesome piece for me - a piece about reading - or lack of it. He's quoting an article by Isaac Marion who runs BurningBuilding.com while working various jobs until his writing/music/art career take off.

I know that feeling.

But the article itself is worth the read - for those of you that do read, and it made me think of the journey of reading. These days, the 'semantic web' and search engines are the glory of the internet - but they are, I think, a hollow glory. It has been my experience that the most interesting things are found by accident - not on purpose. At first, they may not even be useful in a practical sense.

For example, using my own name: Taran. While given through Indian hands, it has many meanings (as do I). In Punjabi, it means 'Savior of All' (something that is impossible to live up to). In a Native American Language, it means 'Gift From Above'. But those are really teasers to something even more interesting: Taranis also is a root of 'Taran' and was a God of Thunder (now you know) - something I can relate to in some ways. But then, how is there this connection between India and Europe?

That is where we get into the Proto Indo European Religion, and instead of giving a solid link - it leads to more questions. Scholars link Taranis to Parjanya, which is nothing like my name and has no relation I can find to the Sanskrit or Punjabi definitions... and while, in my spare time, I look into these things and unravel this mystery of a name and I have made no real headway in an empirical sense... look at the journey that my mind has been able to travel. The search for meaning is much different than the search for data.

There is depth in such journeys of the mind - stretching out, reading information on the way to find things we find other information that is of worth but not immediately applicable. And if people aren't reading, they aren't picking up these stray tidbits - a difficult issue for someone like myself to comprehend.

How does this happen? Why are people not reading? I do not know, but the signs of a decreased level of literacy are running around the internet. Writing to be understood comes from reading and understanding... it is a troublesome thing. How can one have critical thought without a wide basis of knowledge to think from? Some would say that the schools are failing. Maybe they are, but we can't blame schools for the fault of the individuals.

Then again, I could use a few robots to do some menial chores while I read and write. As long as they work cheap and handle repetitive tasks well, there should be no issue.