"Hard-wired for story"

Every now and then, someone who is brilliant says something stupid — often the result of spending too much time riding a jet stream of high praise. Steve Jobs, the co-founder and chief executive of Apple Inc., did such a thing last month when he all but declared the death of reading.

...Reading is something else, an engagement of the imagination with life experience. It’s fad-resistant, precisely because human beings are hard-wired for story, and intrinsically curious. Reading is not about product.

...True, reading is down, somewhat, from 1992, especially reading of literature. So what? People are eating fewer vegetables than they used to - or should - but that doesn’t mean carrots have no future.