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Annual Reading Promoters Conference
Lecture: “When he woke up, the cheesecake was still there”
Annual Reading Promoters Conference
Lecture: “When he woke up, the cheesecake was still there”
Artificial intelligence already reads faster than any human being: in a matter of seconds, it can summarize entire novels and generate texts of any desired length with apparent coherence. In this context, the figure of the reflective reader seems to fade. Why read, if machines can already do it for us? If we move beyond fear of machines and instead reaffirm our conviction in the value of reading, we may conclude that deep reading has become, almost, an act of cultural resistance, a way to train attention, empathy, and critical thinking in the face of a digital environment that tends to homogenize, accelerate, and simplify.
Yet something even deeper is at stake: the pleasure of understanding. This pleasure, evolutionarily selected as an adaptive reward through the release of neurotransmitters, does not arise from the rapid consumption of data, but from the slow assembly of ideas, from the connection between meanings, from that inner light that ignites after demanding reading. AI can provide answers, but it cannot give us that lived spark of meaning. To read is to understand, and to understand deeply is to experience joy.
In a world that externalizes comprehension and rewards immediacy, defending slow reading is a way of defending our humanity. Reading deeply is more than acquiring information: it is living meaning, building discernment, and experiencing the pleasure of understanding. This conference will explore these themes and present strategies to foster this unique pleasure that only reading can provide—especially among beginning or less experienced readers.
Participant: Toni Pou
Tuesday, December 02
10:00 to 10:50
Thursday, December 04
11:30 to 12:20