A novel approach of this book is its reliance on experimental evidence primarily drawn from well-controlled comparisons between completely illiterate and literate individuals, highlighting the mind-enhancing powers of reading. To properly interpret this evidence, it is necessary to clarify the evolving definitions of literacy and often inconsistent terminology used to describe individuals with varying literacy levels.

New media create new realities, and, more than we often realize or acknowledge, new ways of thinking: new minds. Reading and the written medium transform not only societies but also individual minds.

The medium is not merely a channel for transmitting information or a passive carrier of content. While we tend to focus on the content, it is the medium that brings about the deeper, transformative effects. Extending McLuhan’s insight, one compelling conclusion emerges: The mind is the medium. The science of the benefits of the written medium for individual minds elucidates the myriad ways in which reading reshapes and enhances human cognition.

The study of memory resilience and cognitive aging remains in its early stages. Nevertheless, growing evidence suggests that a lifetime of literacy engagement and continued reading in older age confer significant cognitive benefits. High literacy levels are associated with increased cognitive reserve; which may offer a buffer against age-related memory decline. Once forgetfulness begins to interfere with daily functioning, this additional reserve may help avid readers maintain cognitive performance. In people at elevated risk for age-related memory disorders, such reserve may even delay or mitigate the onset of full-blown dementia.

The destructive competition hypothesis views the brain as a system with finite processing resources, where new cognitive functions compete with evolutionary older ones for cortical space. In contrast, our combined neuroimaging and behavioral evidence points to a different conclusion: The human brain has the remarkable capacity to accommodate new cultural skills, such as reading, while simultaneously enhancing related preexisting abilities, such as face recognition. Rather than impairing older functions, reading acquisition appears to support and refine them.

Reading is not just a cognitive skill; it is neural training. It fine-tunes attentional focus, oculomotor coordination, and the coupling of deep-brain circuits with visual cortex regions. Moreover, the direction and complexity of writing systems shape spatial cognition and aesthetic preferences. This makes literacy a powerful cultural force that rewires ancient neural networks to enhance how we see, search, and attend to the world.

Reading leads to the development of an extensive and sophisticated vocabulary, which increases the size, complexity, and interconnectivity of information stored in long-term memory. Frequent reading helps maintain this stored information and supports efficient retrieval. In addition, reading enhances short-term memory skills, particularly the ability to actively manipulate temporary information in working memory.

We need to consider that influences of reading on cognition are not restricted only to knowledge effects obtained from the content of what is read. Reading enhances cognitive skills that are highly relevant and useful for doing well in intelligence tests. There is robust evidence that reading massively trains and consequently improves many different perceptual and cognitive abilities: The science of how reading enhances the human mind reveals the many perks of being a bookworm.

Learning to read any script requires paying close attention to the orientation of the character because it is a crucial part of what defines it. Learners of any script therefore get extensive practice of some of the skills that underlie mirror image discrimination. Proficient and automatic mirror discrimination abilities, however, only develop when the reader learns to read a script with mirror characters such as English. Thus, learning to read in general, and learning to read a script with mirror letters specifically, enhances visual discrimination skills.

Learning to read an alphabetic writing system enables individuals to segment spoken language into fine-grained speech sound units. This increased awareness of the phonological structure of spoken language enhances literate people’s ability to analyze and reflect on speech. Reading may also improve spoken word recognition; however, current research suggests that such benefits depend on the specific writing system and the degree of transparency with which language maps speech sounds onto graphemes.

Reading proficiency does not end once a reader can fluently decode a writing system. Literacy acquisition is a continuum that progresses from basic script decoding to efficient access and retrieval of information, to the ability to integrate and interpret embedded content within texts. At the highest levels, literacy involves critical reflection and the evaluation of complex texts, taking into account cultural, historical, societal, social, and power structures that may influence or obscure the validity of the information. Reaching these advanced levels of literacy requires regular engagement with sophisticated texts, along with the development of strong critical thinking and reasoning skills.

How likely it is that literacy, as we have known it, will be preserved in the years ahead? Or, perhaps the question has already shifted, from whether the written medium will fade to how soon that disappearance might occur. Generative artificial intelligence and related technology can support the transition toward new forms of literacy that evolve alongside emerging media. Large language models, in particular, may help preserve some of the cognitive and communicative advantages associated with “traditional” book-based language. In this way, technology could shape future media landscapes, keeping the perks of being a bookworm while softening some of the downsides of newer formats.

Reading and writing impose the logic of language more directly on thinking than speech does, as they foster deeper awareness of and sustained engagement with the rules and linear structure of language. Literacy enables readers to reason about topics that extend beyond personal experience, cultivating the ability to apply universal formal principles when evaluating events. This, in turn, enhances one’s understanding of the causal chains of reasoning required for deductive thinking.

Reading-induced abstraction processes take time but they are the foundation of what may be called abstract intelligence. Abstract intelligence is related to what often is called “out-of-the-box thinking”; seeing similarities and focusing on generalization enables thinking about something from a new perspective. Abstraction makes us more intelligent, which is one reason why reading makes us smart.

Spoken and written language are likely to share many aspects of how they are represented in the human mind. For instance, it would be highly inefficient for the brain to store the meaning of words separately for its spoken and written forms. Instead, shared representations across modalities allow for interaction between them, meaning that the effects of written language can directly influence spoken language processing. As a result, predictive learning that occurs during reading naturally transfers to spoken language. Knowledge accumulated through reading, along with the predictive behavior it fosters, can thus directly support prediction in speech as well.

This chapter begins by returning to a key moment for conceptions of medical progress in the context of civil rights movements when a new awareness of the insufficiencies of medical progress as “merely” scientific knowledge gains led to a sustained interest in knowledge that was empowering for patients. Amid the growing numbers of people who challenged the focus on scientific progress, many turned to freedom as a new concept for grounding progress in medicine. At times, this went together with more holistic views of personhood and health and the desire to put self-determination at the heart of theories of progress. Other, related trends acknowledged the potential contradictions between freedom and progress head-on and argued that taking individual freedom seriously implied challenging traditional, scientific/technological forms of medical progress. The chapter concludes with a detailed examination of several recent instances, including personalized medicine, in which technological progress is presented as being highly compatible with individual empowerment and liberation.

Advanced AI (generative AI) poses challenges to the practice of law and to society as a whole. The proper governance of AI is unresolved but will likely be multifaceted (soft law such as standardisation, best practices and ethical guidelines), as well as hard law consisting of a blend of existing law and new regulations. This chapter argues that ‘lawyer’s professional codes’ of conduct (ethical guidelines) provide a governance system that can be applied to the AI industry. The increase in professionalisation warrants the treating of AI creators, developers and operators, as professionals subject to the obligations foisted on the legal profession and other learned professions. Legal ethics provides an overall conceptual structure that can guide AI development serving the purposes of disclosing potential liabilities to AI developers and building trust for the users of AI. Additionally, AI creators, developers and operators should be subject to fiduciary duty law. Fiduciary duty law as applied to these professionals would require a duty of care in designing safe AI systems, a duty of loyalty to customers, users and society not to create systems that manipulate consumers and democratic governance and a duty of good faith to create beneficial systems. This chapter advocates the use of ethical guidelines and fiduciary law not as soft law but as the basis of structuring private law in the governance of AI.