Today there are sensors that can turn letters into electro-magnetic signs.
But I have not heard of a computer that will read a joke and laugh, or read a tragedy and cry.
We, human beings, know the difference.
We read and we are not only informed, but also moved, sometimes even inspired.
Some of us are moved by poetry, others by pornography.
But whether we read the most exalted words or the most lewd descriptions, the very fact that we are affected means that we have within us a creative power that takes signals and turns them into something meaningful that has an independent existence.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
From the lecture/essay, “On Reading, TV, and the Talmud” by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz