Book as a text and its place in the modern world

The article is devoted to the important cultural problem of modern society, which is the gradual loss of reading culture. This entails the relative neglect of book art in general, including all its elements and for this reason does not make the artist-Illustrator indifferent. The article presents a comparative analysis of books and other text-based (Internet) and non-text media (video, audio) information sources on the basis of revealing the rules of our thinking and perception. The author emphasizes the "textual" character of human thinking, due to the great role of the second signal system in our lives. The relationship of all the cognitive operations (representation, categorization, interpretation, convention) with oral and written speech is asserted. The conclusion about the important role of books in the development of imagination, the formation of thinking culture, the opposition to the “mosaic consciousness” as well as substitution of reality by a virtual surrogate, is approved. Based on the foregoing, the author makes her own conclusions on the prospects of the book in the modern world, which is her personal opinion and does not claim universality.