The changing face of reading

[taglines]

A YouTube video posits a unique viewpoint on reading in the digital age.

Your reax? Valid points or totally subsilly?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xpN78-cJP0

[LDBoblo]

I don't think anything's changed since the last time anyone has bothered to address this seriously.

[HamsterRage]

I appreciate the way he spends the first 1:31 carefully explaining what an idiot he is before he actually starts talking about reading v. "screening".

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by taglines

A YouTube video posits a unique viewpoint on reading in the digital age.

Your reax? Valid points or totally subsilly?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xpN78-cJP0

Still trolling, Dan? Don't you think it is a lie to post a video of yourself and come on here acting like you are posting a video of someone else? A lie of omission at the very least.

Your coming into this forum about reading ebooks for those who care about reading ebooks and doing nothing but constant anti-ebook posts is absolutely nothing but trolling. If I were running this forum, you would have been banned as a troll, and you definitely would have been banned for your sock-puppeting.

It was nice to go for a while without your pathetic (yes, I'm calling you pathetic) trolling. Can't you go back to advocating that South Africa be renamed "Mandelaland?" Or pushing your utterly HORRID little "snailpaper" song on every web site with a discussion area?

I've said before that I don't advocate the banning of legitimate posters, but I do not think you are a legitimate poster-- you come her only to advocate for your little anti-ebook crusade, and to lie and I wish you would be made to go away. I once might have felt bad for "bullying" you when you first started flooding the news/commentary area with "should we rename X as Y" threads, but having since then googled your posting habits-- where, on any web site remotely related to ebooks, you flood the comments area with essay after essay after essay reposted from your many blogs, I'm proud that I helped lower the amount of troll noise you post on Mobileread, and I hope I drive you back under your rock again with this.

[taglines]

Is the internet making us stupid? I don't think so.

Would Hamlet have carried a BlackBerry if such a tablet was available back in his day? I think so. (He would call it an erasable tablet!)

Is reading online and multitasking at the computer terminal re-writing our brains? I don't think so. In fact, I am sure it is not.

Not anymore than reading a newspaper re-wires the brain. Or reading a book on paper. Enough with this re-wiring the brain crap!

But I will tell you what I do think: I think that reading texts -- fiction and nonfiction, poetry and literature, news articles and oped essays -- on a screen is NOT "reading" per se, as we have traditionally defined "reading."

So what is it? I believe screen-reading is a new kind of human mode of reading and that it calls out for a new name.

I call it "screening" until a better word comes down the road and I am sure a better will come down the road. Soon. But for now, bear with me, let's call it "screening." Because it aint reading!

When future MRI scans are done on people during PHD tests to ascertain whether or not different regions of the brain light up when we read on paper compared to when we "read" on screens, the results will show that reading on paper is vastly superior for four things: processing of info, retention of info, analysis and critical thinking skills.

Don't believe me? Ask Anne Mangen in Norway.

Ask Maryanne Wolf at Tufts.

Ask Bill Hill in Hawaii.

Ask James Fallows and David Pogue and John Markoff.

They all have their own takes on this. Listen! And they don't all agree with me. In fact, many people disagree and that's okay, too. But watch!

Ask Gary Small at UCLA. Ask thinkers like William Powers and Patricia Cohen and Nick Bilton and Vindu Goel and Kara Swisher.

Ask Nick Carr or Nicholson Baker. Ask Edward H. Tenner.



So ask Marvin Minsky at MIT. Ask Paul Saffo the futurist. Ask Kevin Kelley or Charles Bigelow. Hey, ask Maureen Dowd!

Is reading on paper superior to reading on screens? You bet.

Will this make any difference? Nope.

Reading devices will continue to sell and be sold, and to hell with critical thinking and analysis, empathy or
EQ!

Money talks, there's the bottom line to feed.

Feed it, Jeff Bezos!

[Rich_D]

Well that's 2 minutes and 34 seconds of my life that I'll never get back...

I think it's just about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

[HamsterRage]

I know that looking at a CRT screen or a tube television is different experience from looking at anything else. That's because of the way that the image is created on the screen with that technology. I have heard of studies that found that they affect the brain to some degree.

I'm not sure that any of that holds for LCD or plasma type displays though. Certainly it can't hold true for e-ink, which doesn't strobe in any way at all.

[taglines]

DMania replied to me offline:

2010/6/22

Sir,

I'll side with the scientists that reading and screening may produce different brain results but it sure as heck doesnt make sense to me; [I lack a pretty diploma too ]

I just dont get how it's not the same as reading...

I do like 'screening' though.

I like to be able to pull out the iPhone and read a downloaded book at convenience vs carrying around a paperback all the time when I might
not even have the opportunity to read.

I recently finished "Red Badge of Courage" while drinking Newcastle in an Irish bar. Good times!

[dmaul1114]

Bunch of hogwash. Information is information, doesn't matter if it's being read on a book, printout, computer monitor, PDA, Kindle, iPad etc.

What's hurting intellectualism is the crazy pace of today's society, and the focus on just making money and having fun. People read less, challenge their intellects less etc. than in past as we live in a society focused on entertainment to a greater extent than anytime in the past. And being so hectic, people are more apt to skim rather than carefully read things. It's the change of society, not the change in media/technology that causes that IMO.

And I'm not being snobby, even being a college professor I'm guilty of that as well as I spend most of my free time on movies, music, video games, tv, sports, beer etc. and don't read all that much etc.

[taglines]

F. Scott Fitzgerald may have had some insight on these matters when he wrote: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

[taglines]

Dmania, above, made a good comment, and I his point too. Glad he liked the term "screening" -- it might catch on as an alternative word for reading, later on.

Screen-reading is reading, but a new kind of reading, so maybe a new word will help.

And yes, it's cool to read books on iPhones and iPads, sure, of course. I am not againt the internet, i love the internet!

I just worry we are plugged in too much and I worry that paper reading might die out with future generations. And am not sure if that will be a good thing.

i hope both reading and screening can co-exist together, why not?

I'm an incorrigible optimist.... I think the march of screens will become less furious and not trample the good things in life. I really do.

My essential point couldn't be simpler: these devices have both upsides and downsides, and we just need to strike a smarter balance. We don't nned PHd's with MRI's to tell us this. We know it already.

[dmaul1114]

Sorry, but I read paper books and e-books currently. I get the exact same experience out of both.

Do I read less than I would if there wasn't super long work days limiting free time, and TV, movies, sports, internet surfing and other more "fun" hobbies competing for that free time? Sure.

But when I do read, I read exactly the same on paper on a pc or a Kindle. I've always been a word at a time reader, and that's how I read on every medium.

Text is text is text is text. It's all the same.

[taglines]

Tech writer tells me today, re all this brouhaha:

"Danny, From my perspective, I suspect that there are real functionally-relevant differences between holding a physical print medium in your hands and reading it, especially the way I taught myself to study, by marking, annotating, diagramming, bookmarking, reviewing, highlighting, etc.. Even with the best reading tech, and the highest resolution available, these things are still easier and more efficient with print media. The physical medium is an extension of our mind, an analog, in a way that electronic books are not, at least not yet. I remember the position of something I read on the page and the position of the page in the book. My brain maps the knowledge I obtained from the book onto a visual picture of the book in my memory, and this gives me an index for reflective thinking. ''

''Perhaps this will become possible with future reading technologies, and perhaps not. I know I am reluctant to let go of physical books to try to find out! ''

''I find that I need to be optimistic about future tech because I don't see being able to oppose the cultural and economic forces toward e-books and web media even with my best arguments. I am not excited about tilting at windmills, as much as I probably seem like a curmudgeon at times. I am more interested in knowing how I can better make use of the things I can't stop, and keep using the things that I find benefit me."

[lene1949]

If reading on a screen should be calling 'screening', then reading on paper should be called 'papering'

But, Dan - we've had this discussion on MR ever since you started here... Then you changed your name, so people who had put you on 'ignore' would still read your posts...

[Donnageddon]

Dan, Dan... hang it up. There is no "brouhaha" except in your mind.