The end of reading

The New York Times says that people read these days to be social and to fit in with others who are reading the same books.  It also says that we are losing our ability to think deeply.  That we spend far too much time being interrupted by one kind of technology or another.  Either it is true that reading is an individual activity whose enthusiasm cannot be easily transferred to another or it is a communal activity that moves us more towards the hive mentality that one writer warned against of the Internet.  Does anyone have the patience to sit through an entire book?  A book takes hours!  We have only seconds!  Add to this the fact that, according to the same NYT article, people have no thirst for fictional constructions.  We want reality as much as possible.  Perhaps we are losing our imaginations.  When that happens- watch out!  Fascism will not be far off.