The changing face of reading

[honey]

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

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

i agree with you.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

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.

Ahem!

[coolcat]

Reading is reading. Uses your eyes, words go into your brain, that's reading. Does not matter what surface or texture you read it on. Ridiculous topic! So watching a movie on a TV screen is not watching a movie?

[danbloom]

Hey, this is DanBloom speaking here, and I want to explain the very first post, above, and why I used the taglines ID. As some of you remember, a certain Darren Garrsion, who often posts on MobileRead under the ardeegee ID, never was happy to allow me to say my say in peace, last year, maybe two years ago, and everytime I posted, he would immediately chime in with off message notes, like he did here as well, above, about Mandelaland and Snailpapers and other things, that were totally irrelvant to my posts, so I had to take the measure of not using danbloom anymore as my userid here, and I let the mods know, and they know, and I started posting anew under the taglines ID.

I think everyone here knows taglines is me. It was never my intention to pose as a sockpuppet or a troll, above first post, and pretend it wasn't me, as Darren once again accuses me of doing, and again bringing in totally irrelevant links to my other blogs online about other subjects. I have no idea who Darren Garrison is, and whether he is a good person or a bad person, I have never met him and he refuses to answer my polite emails to him, so I can only give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he a good man who means well, even though he seems a bit misguided with some weird emotional EQ deficiency that turns him into a guided missile, or maybe I should say misguided missile, every time he sees a post of mine. I hope his friends here will keep him honest.

That said, I was not lying or trolling or sockpuppeting with the YouTube post. I assumed for sure that Darren knew it was me, and everyone else here, and the very YouTube link itself immediately ID's the video as by me, Dan Bloom, so why would I be trolling or lying or sockpuppeting? But just to clear up, in case there is still any confusion, taglines was the userid of DanBloom, but I will start using my original ID here so there won't be anymore confusion.

That said, thanks everyone, for your comments pro and con. I need to make this very clear, and I hope Darren Garrison is reading this too: I am not anti-Ereaders, and I am not anti-screen-reading and I am not anti-computers or anti the Digital Age. My god, darren, I use computers everyday, i read on screens off screens every day, I love this digital revolution. In fact, I just wrote a long 4-page magazine piece on Prime View International Co. and its E INK acquisition from Boston, completely pro-PVI and pro E INK and pro Ereaders. I will post the link here when it is available online (it's still only in the print magazine, but will go online July 1)

I only wonder, from time to time, about the different modes of reading, on paper and on screens, and how they are different, if they are different, and what all this might mean for the future. Most comments above have been good, both pro and con, and that is why I am posting here, I like the feedback pro and con. When you disagree with me, I don't mind. When a few of you agree with me, and say, yeh, you know, maybe screen-reading IS very different from paper reading, not better or worse, just different and let's find out more about all this.


Obviously, Darren Garrison (if indeed that is his real name) ..obviously Darren and I don't see eye to eye on some things. But that's okay. But he and the mods and the commentariat here should know that I am not anti-computer or anti-Ereader or anti-iPad or anti-screening. I am online 24/7/365.

But if one cannot post comments here that go against the Holy Bible of Darren Garrison -- and I didn't know this MRead sitewas Darren Garrison's private fiefdom but I guess it is -- then this forum should rename itself GarrisonRead.com, not MobileRead. SMILE.

So to sum up, friend Darren: it was me as taglines, you knew that, this is me, I hope you know that, and in the future I will post only as danbloom here. I wish you could have the guts to post with your real name, too, but for obvious reasons you prefer to stay in the shadows as ''ardeegee''. That's your choice.

Anyways, I enjoyed all the posts above, and thanks. Mods, if you are reading this, now you know....the rest of the story, and the pre-story and the current story. Thanks.


Cheers,
Danny

[queentess]

Originally Posted by 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.

Oh YAY, let's have this conversation again. Started by the same guy. This is fun. Everybody dance.

[danbloom]

Originally Posted by queentess

Oh YAY, let's have this conversation again. Started by the same guy. This is fun. Everybody dance.

queentess, blame on ardeegee.

But look how another website treats this with much more decorum and no flames:

http://www.teleread.com/2010/06/24/d...and-screening/

[queentess]

Originally Posted by danbloom

My god, darren, I use computers everyday, i read on screens off screens every day, I love this digital revolution.

"Digital revolution"? Hello, welcome to 1971.

[danbloom]

A MRI expert tells me:

"Speaking of screening, when you call for MRI tests to investigate its difference from reading, isn't that a form of screening, too, privileging an image on an electronic display? The test I would suggest is not telling subjects the real purpose of the experiment, letting some read and comment on a text displayed in a printed book OR on a PC screen OR on a reader (e-ink or TFT), and then let raters also unaware of the real purpose look for differences in what people write after different modes. "

I agree. Let the tests begin!

[HamsterRage]

Originally Posted by coolcat

Reading is reading. Uses your eyes, words go into your brain, that's reading. Does not matter what surface or texture you read it on. Ridiculous topic! So watching a movie on a TV screen is not watching a movie?

What I had heard was directly related to the experience of watch TV on a traditional tube screen. The idea was that the mechanics of how the image is produced on such a screen requires that your brain works in a particular way in order to interpret it. Furthermore, this tends to overpower the mental demands of whatever content you are watching. [In case you don't know, a CRT uses an electron gun to spray a tight beam onto a phosphorus surface which lights up. The beam travels across the screen in hundreds of rows a number of times a second, but it's only lighting up one tiny little patch of the screen at a time. Your mind fills in the illusion of a moving picture. Take a high speed photograph of a TV to see what it looks like without the illusion.]

Specifically, the claim was that watching TV induced beta-wave modes in the brain, which are related to sleep patterns. This happens even if you are watching the most educational of PBS programming. My guess is that any claim that says that "screening" is different "reading" is based on this kind of research.

Of course, this was years ago, I don't have any citations and it may have been completely debunked by now.

In any event, I can't see how this would translate to the world of LED, Plasma and eInk. There's no strobing effect. All of the pixels are lit up at the same time, and they only flicker off and on when the picture changes. eInk is particularly static until you change pages.

[danbloom]

Originally Posted by HamsterRage

....
Of course, this was years ago, I don't have any citations and it may have been completely debunked by now.

In any event, I can't see how this would translate to the world of LED, Plasma and eInk. There's no strobing effect. All of the pixels are lit up at the same time, and they only flicker off and on when the picture changes. eInk is particularly static until you change pages.

HR, your comment above is interesting!

"Arnie" gives his POV on screen and reading:

"In the TouTubevideo, Dan gives his opinion that “screening” is (in his words) “vastly inferior” to reading on paper. He suggests that brain scans be done with subjects reading on paper and then reading on electronic devices. I assume from his tone that he is confident that experts would agree that the mental experience of reading on paper would be shown to touch the brain in a much healthier way. ......I am not so sure that there would be much of a difference, nor do I think that such studies would clearly reveal some major flaw in “screening”. Since Dan is just conjecturing, it is quite possible that “screening” might be revealed to be superior in some ways."

I replied to "Arnie":

''Arnie, good response! I like this kind of intelligent feedback. And you are right, this is pure conjecture on my part, based on a hunch based on anecdotal and personal experience, but yes, just a conjecture, and you are very right: it could go the other way. In fact, it could turn out that screening is superior to reading on paper, if not in all ways, at least in some ways, yes!

I am not confident of anything, re all this, Arnie. I am only confident that is good to ask these kinds of questions and let the MRI scans show us the way later on. It could go 50/50 and in fact, that is a strong likelihood. I have no agenda, and I have no dog in this fight. Just curious.

Thanks for weighing on on this. I like your reasoned approach. ''

[Rich_D]

Originally Posted by danbloom

Obviously, Darren Garrison (if indeed that is his real name) ..obviously Darren and I don't see eye to eye on some things. But that's okay. But he and the mods and the commentariat here should know that I am not anti-computer or anti-Ereader or anti-iPad or anti-screening. I am online 24/7/365.


Cheers,
Danny

In your video you stated you don't own a computer but you go down to an internet cafe for an hour or two every day. How is that online 24/7/365?

[ardeegee]

Edited on demand (moot now anyway) and reading this thread linked by queentess above encapsulates everything you need to know about how my view of DanBloom evolved, anyway.

[Wordcrasher]

My wife and I reads the same book some weeks ago. She read her paper copy and I read it on my PRS-600. We exchanged our impressions about the book and I never thought for a moment we had a different experience. Different opinions for sure, but I think we both READ the book.

[danbloom]

Originally Posted by Wordcrasher

My wife and I reads the same book some weeks ago. She read her paper copy and I read it on my PRS-600. We exchanged our impressions about the book and I never thought for a moment we had a different experience. Different opinions for sure, but I think we both READ the book.

And I accept your experience as real, Wordcrasher. Like I always said from the get go, I might be entirely wrong about this. And I don't mind being wrong. The more I hear from people like you, and your experiences, I am beginning to think i AM wrong. Thanks for comment.

[danbloom]

Originally Posted by Rich_D

In your video you stated you don't own a computer but you go down to an internet cafe for an hour or two every day. How is that online 24/7/365?

Rich, just stretching it a bit. I am online almost 365 a year, in fact, i have not missed a day in two years. But am online at the Internet cafe, 10 minutes from my home, just for an hour, two at most...... and i have no connection at home or office (well, I don't have an office. the interent cafe is my office. hehe). That's what i meant. sorry for not being more clear.