DECODING WRITING ITSELF

Ever since the advent of the printing press man has felt the innate need to document things. To record history. To pass on tales of days gone. In fact it has been argued that the desire of man to reproduce is in fact due to a need to 'live forever', by way of passing on their genetics (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/286/5437/23). Perhaps the act of writing and publishing follows this chain of thought. Exactly what makes people write, to feel the urge to put pen to paper or, in a modern sense, to put finger to keyboard?
In the end we’re all readers and the act of reading is an active choice to receive—and also to participate, to imagine, to interpret. It’s a kind of gift we make to writers, in fact—just as much as their writing may seem a kind of gift to us (http://www.readreader.org/actOfReading.html). Although news writing and journalism follows the principle of hard news reporting; complete with a 'pyramid structure' and author-content 'detachment', there must still be a picture painted in the reader's mind. If this is not acheived, whether via facts in hardline journalism or vividness in a feature article, the reader will soon be lost. There seems to be an invisible connection that is drawn between author and reader despite their anonymity to each other via their joint cognitive dissemination of the content. The author as creator, the reader as essentially decoder. Perhaps this is why people feel such an urge to record history in any shape or form, be it photography or writing.