Mikes Males on the Future of the Internet, Reading on Screens and Young People Today

[danbloom]

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[pilotbob]

Is this a different interview than this one that you posted about?

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=60909

BOb

[danbloom]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Is this a different interview than this one that you posted about?

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=60909

BOb

Different person.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by danbloom

Different person.

Ok, thanks. Wasn't sure because the other one didn't actually name the person. Just said "college professor".

BOb

[jament]

It's sort of interesting. I don't know, Males' job is researching juvenile crimes issues so I don't know how relevant his opinion is on this issue. His main claim to fame is writing Scapegoat Generation, a book that spends a lot of effort to present all the methods that youth are demonized in order to convince us not to demonize them.

Anyway, regardless of his credentials, I don't think he makes any kind of case that people approach reading a paper book differently than they approach reading on a screen.

Males is talking about reading linked news content on the internet compared to paper books. Well, duh. Sure, it's different. Reading on a computer with dynamic content, the reader can jump from and to anywhere as interesting topics strike interest. It's a spider-webbed method instead of front-to-back.

But he's discussing more the type of reading material than the method of delivery. Whether people are reading on screens or paper, they will read novels front to back and magazine/news by jumping to articles they're interested in.

I read The Economist both on a Kindle and in paper and either way, I skip to things that interest me. I read a novel the same way on my Kindle that I do in hardback.

[The Hooded Claw]

Originally Posted by jament

It's sort of interesting. I don't know, Males' job is researching juvenile crimes issues so I don't know how relevant his opinion is on this issue. His main claim to fame is writing Scapegoat Generation, a book that spends a lot of effort to present all the methods that youth are demonized in order to convince us not to demonize them.

I have no independent knowledge of the man, but that description can't help but make me think of the zealots who badmouthed comic books for destroying our nation's youth in the 1950s....Maybe next we'll have young people in leather jackets with greasy kid stuff in their hair hanging out under streetlights and reading their Kindles and Nooks!