I hear a lot about the "death of reading" as a form of recreation, but it seems to me that what's changing is not that people aren't reading, it's what they're reading. If anything, blogs and other online media are more popular than ever. But there are only 24 hours in a day, and folks need to eat, sleep, and earn a living. This doesn't leave leave as much time as one would wish for pleasant pass-times like reading.

Likewise, if one wants to write, time is the great limiter. Writing more means reading less. Sometimes technology helps out, like when carrying a Kindle helps carve out extra time to read. And sometimes technology competes. Ever since I started posting on Twitter and Facebook, I have had a hard time keeping up with LiveJournal, both with blogging myself and with reading other folks' posts.

Sigh. I write science fiction, and that makes me think in the tropes of my genre. I want someone to invent a way to do more in less time— to help people sleep less, or to make things like commuting take less time, or whatever. Except for flying cars; I don't see any point in those unless they can keep from running into each other.