Do we need a new word for "reading" on screens since it is a very different animal?

[Donnageddon]

Dan, Dan, I am sorry you took offense to my last post, I was attempting to be charming. And humorous.

You are right tho - Can't win for losing.

[danbloom]

thread closed

[Donnageddon]

Interesting find, RDG, it makes danbloom seem even less sincere

I have never yet read a book on a e-reader, and in fact, have never even seen one of those\machines or devices. I am a book man. I am a meat and potatoes book man. I like books printed on paper, and I like newspaper printed on paper. I like the sensation of being able to hold the page close to my eyes when needed, and I like being able to underline words, circle words, cut out newspaper clippings for my files (and pockets) and with books I like to annotate in the margins, as I just did reading “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy. I wrote over 1000 words in the margins of the book as a I read it page by page last December. A moving experience. I cannot have such moving experiences on a computer. But I do like email and Internet searches and I get 50 percent of my news info now online. I will never read a book on an e-reader. Not me. But if other people prefer that way, cool. I am not a Luddite. I am a bookman.

What is going on here, danbloom?

[danbloom]

Originally Posted by Donnageddon

Dan, Dan, I am sorry you took offense to my last post, I was attempting to be charming. And humorous.

You are right tho - Can't win for losing.

Donn, didn't take offense at all. I liked the charm and humour, sure.

[danbloom]

thread closed

[danbloom]

before I leave, read this, if you wish:

Matthew Battles, a historian of libaries read the The Hogwash Statement: posted here and wrote his own blog post here:

[I've heard about this campaign to coin a neologism to describe the behavior we undertake when we seek to decode and comprehend text displayed on computer screens. The campaign is concerned that this behavior and its impact on brains is fundamentally different from "reading," and that neuroscientists may not be paying sufficient attention to this emergent phenomenon. As the Hogwash Statement puts it,:]

[to search for a new word (if needed, and if useful!) is to point out the need for scholars and scientists to study the very real differences between reading on paper and reading on screens, and not just with learned opinions and surveys, but with hard science -- that is to say, MRI brain scan studies in laboratory settings and hospital rooms to study -- firsthand! up close and personal! -- white matter and grey matter neural pathways and try to ascertain if reading on paper surfaces lights up different parts of the brain compared to reading on a screen.]

The manifesto is called “The Hogwash Statement.” “For all that I care,” he writes, “the new word could be ‘hogwash’, as in ‘I’m hogwashing Moby Dick on my Kindle tonight.’” The main thing, he asserts, is that experts—and the rest of us—start paying attention to the differences between reading paper-based texts and those served up by electronic devices.

Indeed there already is a great deal of interest among neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and educators in the neurology, the biology, of reading. Researchers are using MRI and other technologies, along with tried-and-true cognitive testing, to limn the circuits that reading forges and follows in the brain. And some of these researchers are turning their interest on the question of reading v. “screening,” as he says. A few links—

Jonah Lehrer, a friend of mine and a great science writer, covers this topic in a recent blog post (see his book Proust was a Neuroscientist for much more);

he cites a recent brain imaging study comparing brain pathways of “expert reading” to those of struggling readers;

there’s the recent NYTimes Room for Debate piece polling various sorts of experts on the brain’s receptivity to ebooks (which includes David Gelertner’s short piece, which I link to in my reverse e-book post);

and Maryanne Wolf’s Proust and the Squid, subtitled The Story of Science and the Reading Brain. Wolf (who also gets space in the Times feature linked to above) is especially concerned about the neural implications of the switch from paper to screens.

Of course to say “paper to screens” is a massive simplification of the transformation that’s underway. The cognitive, cultural, and technological shift we’re experiencing goes well beyond the medium of the literal surface to embrace electronic networks, the durability of texts, the ways we experience and share them … every aspect of reading and writing. But reading is always already undergoing constant transformation. Try reading a gothic manuscript from the 14th century with its many scribal abbreviations, its exotic letterforms, its strange way of organizing and managing words on the page. It’s nearly impenetrable, even to the student of Latin. What’s the implication? In the 14th century, brains were different. They were different in the 17th, and the 19th; they were different in Greece in 600 BCE. As we’ve gone from “claying” to “papyring” to “velluming” to “papering” to “screening,” our brains have reorganized themselves—reorganizing the media as they go. But where do we locate “reading” in that history? Is there one essential point at which it all culminates? Or does the process of transformation itself represent the essence of “reading”?

New means of putting text together are also new ways of putting the brain together. But that neural plasticity is what we do as humans; that, in a word, is reading, whatever the media.


Last comment .....

[Donnageddon]

Dan, Dan, I would rather not have to do a search to find out what your true feelings about ebooks are. I would hope that everyone would be straight up in there posts and comments. It hardly matters that you told an interviewer somewhere else what you feel about ebooks. It is the fact that here you pretend to not have these attitudes about ebooks. That is insincerity. And to expect that the comments you made that I quoted were all in jest beggars belief.

I know people are able to change their minds about an issue, and I hope you take the time to explore here in MobileRead, and perhaps find out that ebooks really can be a great advantage, and not as detrimental as you have previously thought.

But I respect honesty, and not hidden agendas.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by danbloom

But hey, I did not post those comments HERE. I said -- uttered those words -- six months ago -- i never repeated any of that HERE. So now we go to every website and judge people for what they said on different forums, even though they had rethunk their ideas and never said such things here?

You asked us to google you in a thread where you wanted us to be charmed by your making up the word "bindle" for paper books (get it-- like "kindle" but with a "B"!) Don't get all huffy when that googling you suggested backfires on you. And yes, what you say on related subjects on different forums is entirely applicable to what your true agenda really is. If you pretend to "play nice" in one forum but prove to say exactly the opposite in others, it is 100% a valid measure of your sincerity and your character.

[Donnageddon]

One of the intereting things danbloom said was

I like the sensation of being able to hold the page close to my eyes when needed, and I like being able to underline words

If dan sticks around he might discover that with ebooks, he can just adjust the font size when needed`,and many ebook readers allow for underlining, notes in the margin and other advantages that just might increase critical thought. Without the eyestrain or broken pencils. But I am not a proponent of the ebooks ability to increase critical thinking, If it does though, we might want to call it "ecritical thinking"

[ardeegee]

So many people mention writing notes in books and how that is a drawback of ebooks. I never write in books. No underlines, no highlights, no margin notes. That goes for the textbooks I had in high school and college, too (even the ones I owned-- or especially the ones that I owned.) That even extended so far as to not allowing anyone to sign my yearbooks (and that isn't just an excuse from someone who didn't have offers-- I'd sign the yearbooks of others, and not offer mine in return.) I've always felt writing in books to be some sort of vandalism. So in that respect, there is no difference between my own paper books and my ebooks-- there never is writing in any of them (unless it came with the book-- most of my deadtree books I buy used hardbacks over the internet-- but most of the books that I buy are science non-fiction hardbacks that mostly seem to have never been read once.)

[danbloom]

Originally Posted by Donnageddon

Dan, Dan, I would rather not have to do a search to find out what your true feelings about ebooks are. I would hope that everyone would be straight up in there posts and comments. It hardly matters that you told an interviewer somewhere else what you feel about ebooks. It is the fact that here you pretend to not have these attitudes about ebooks. That is insincerity. And to expect that the comments you made that I quoted were all in jest beggars belief.

I know people are able to change their minds about an issue, and I hope you take the time to explore here in MobileRead, and perhaps find out that ebooks really can be a great advantage, and not as detrimental as you have previously thought.

But I respect honesty, and not hidden agendas.

Okay, i have just changed my mind due all the good comments here at MobileRead and i now take back everything i said about there being a need or benefit for finding or casting around for a new word for reading on screens. A very stupid idea, i was completely wrong about it, it was a good chase, but turns out I was wrong. Case closed. I no longer feel there is ANY NEED at all to even discuss this anymore, becauser I myself now feel it was a stoopid idea to begin with. Let's move on to other threads and close this one, since the threader now doesn't not even think his original idea was a good one, and he now believes that "reading" is a perfect word for what we do when we read on screens, so reading is reading. End of story. Good!

[danbloom]

Darren Garrison aka ardegeee ;645074]You asked

[danbloom]

Originally Posted by Donnageddon

One of the intereting things danbloom said was



If dan sticks around he might discover that with ebooks, he can just adjust the font size when needed`,and many ebook readers allow for underlining, notes in the margin and other advantages that just might increase critical thought. Without the eyestrain or broken pencils. But I am not a proponent of the ebooks ability to increase critical thinking, If it does though, we might want to call it "ecritical thinking"

FINALLY, we are making progress, getting through. Yes, e-critical thinking is a perfect term for that, Donn. I love it.

Case solved. Case closed, as I said above. Over and out, Roger!

[danbloom]

Originally Posted by Donnageddon

.....
If dan sticks around he might discover that with ebooks, he can just adjust the font size when needed`,and many ebook readers allow for underlining, notes in the margin and other advantages that just might increase critical thought. Without the eyestrain or broken pencils....

Yes, good points. Ebooks can do marvelous things. I agree, in many ways they are an improvement over paper books. I do agree.

Cheers,

db

[danbloom]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

So many people mention writing notes in books and how that is a drawback of ebooks. I never write in books. No underlines, no highlights, no margin notes. That goes for the textbooks I had in high school and college, too (even the ones I owned-- or especially the ones that I owned.) That even extended so far as to not allowing anyone to sign my yearbooks (and that isn't just an excuse from someone who didn't have offers-- I'd sign the yearbooks of others, and not offer mine in return.) I've always felt writing in books to be some sort of vandalism. So in that respect, there is no difference between my own paper books and my ebooks-- there never is writing in any of them (unless it came with the book-- most of my deadtree books I buy used hardbacks over the internet-- but most of the books that I buy are science non-fiction hardbacks that mostly seem to have never been read once.)

Well, Darren Garrison at cynapse@charter.net .....THAT explains it.