I am a perpetual optimist, especially on the issue of literature in the digital age. I believe that the Internet presents a number of wonderful new ways to create and distribute literature, and I firmly deny, deny, deny when faced with the all-too-ubiquitous argument that the Internet is killing the book.
One point on which I will concede, however, is that the screen is changing the way we think. After spending eight hours at a computer and simultaneously listening to music, checking Twitter or Facebook (more often than I ought to, I should note), answering emails, editing video, or whatever it is that I’ll end up doing on a given day, suddenly I feel very distracted when faced with an open book. Reading a book can be jarringly simple after a day of multitasking and multimedia; when your brain is trained to process multiple streams of information at the same time, at lighting speed no less, sometimes it can be difficult to focus on just one thing.
So for those people, there’s Teleportal Readings, a monthly web video series made for “those who love reading but readings.” Or, I’d like to add, for those who love readings but think that video recordings of them are terribly dull. Watch what a little green screen hoodoo can do for literature:
Since starting Lit Drift, I’ve gotten used to reading a lot of doom-and-gloom opinion pieces about the death of the publishing industry. I’ve read predictions that the paperbound book will be totally replaced by digital books within the decade, or that we’ll all stop buying books and forget how to read, and so on. Most of it I’ve taken with a 
