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Fiction
In reply to the discussion: E-reading isn’t reading....... [View all]
Jim__
(14,506 posts)17. Does e-reading serve any real purpose?
I am sure it does to us. The article definitely got a few things right.
Amid the seemingly endless debates today about the future of reading, there remains one salient, yet often overlooked fact: Reading isn’t only a matter of our brains; it’s something that we do with our bodies. Reading is an integral part of our lived experience, our sense of being in the world, even if at times this can mean feeling intensely apart from it. How we hold our reading materials, how we look at them, navigate them, take notes on them, share them, play with them, even where we read them—these are the categories that have mattered most to us as readers throughout the long and varied history of reading. They will no doubt continue to do so into the future.
Understanding reading at this most elementary level—at the level of person, habit, and gesture—will be essential as we continue to make choices about the kind of reading we care about and the kind of technologies that will best embody those values. To think about the future of reading means, then, to think about the long history of how touch has shaped reading and, by extension, our sense of ourselves while we read.
Understanding reading at this most elementary level—at the level of person, habit, and gesture—will be essential as we continue to make choices about the kind of reading we care about and the kind of technologies that will best embody those values. To think about the future of reading means, then, to think about the long history of how touch has shaped reading and, by extension, our sense of ourselves while we read.
Yes, everything we do is physical and the physical aspects play an important role in the experience. Eugene O'Neill wrote his plays in long hand. When he was older, he got arthritis in his hands and he couldn't write that way any more. People tried to get him to type - he was physically able to do that - but he said he couldn't adjust his process to typing. When electronic word processing came along, many old time writers stayed with their typewriters - the typewriter was an integral part of their process. So, yes, for many of us who grew up with books, the book is an integral part of reading. We may never adjust to e-books.
The article is also right about the book being a technology:
No other passage has more profoundly captured the meaning of the book than this one. Not just reading but reading books was aligned in Augustine with the act of personal conversion. Augustine was writing at the end of the fourth century, when the codex had largely superseded the scroll as the most prevalent form of reading material. We know Augustine was reading a book from the way he randomly accesses a page and uses his finger to mark his place. The conversion at the heart of The Confessions was an affirmation of the new technology of the book within the lives of individuals, indeed, as the technology that helped turn readers into individuals. Turning the page, not turning the handle of the scroll, was the new technical prelude to undergoing a major turn in one’s own life.
A technology for transmitting information to people across vast expanses of time and space. It gave people a tremendous advantage over older forms of learning where direct contact with a teacher was necessary. But, e-reading begs the question. With the ability to transmit information electronically, why transmit it alphabetically? Electronics gives us the ability to transmit the information directly through spoken word and visual image.
For us, a generation reared on reading, the book will always be necessary. Will it be necessary for future generations? I doubt it. Electronic transmission of information gives us a more powerful tool than the alphabet for conveying information - direct transmission of the spoken word and visual image.
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Thanks for the link to the MJ article. Loss of privacy should enter into the conversation.
Little Star
Dec 2012
#35
lol! I want to marry the internet because everyday I learn something new on these tubes. n/t
Little Star
Jan 2013
#51