I screen, you screen, we all screen -- or do we?

I screen, you screen, we all screen -- or do we?

by Dan E. Bloom





Alex Beam, writing a column in the June 19 issue of the Boston Globe,
began his piece by asking his readers, in the print edition of the
paper and online: "Do we read differently on the computer screen from

how we read on the
printed page?"


Beam introduces reading specialist Anne Mangen of the Stavanger
University in Norway, who said an academic paper published in Britain
last year that screen reading and page reading are
very different and that more studies need focus on this issue.


"The feeling of literally being in touch with the text is lost when
your actions - clicking with the mouse, pointing on touch screens, or
scrolling with keys or on touch pads - take place at a distance from
the digital text, which is, somehow, somewhere inside the computer,

the e-book, or the mobile phone,’’Beam quoted Dr Mangen as writing.


She added: “Materiality matters. . . . One main effect of the

intangibility of the digital text is that of making us read in a
shallower, less focused way.’’


When Mr Beam asked Dr Mangen by email if she thought there might be a future
convergence of Kindle reading and Gutenberg reading, she emailed him
back in reply:


“Reading digital text will always differ from reading text that is not
digital (i.e., that has a physical, tangible materiality), no matter
how reader-friendly and ‘paper-like’ the digital reading device (e.g.,
Kindle etc.). The fact that we do not have a direct physical, tangible
access to the totality of the text when reading on Kindle affects the
reading experience. When reading a book we can always see, and feel
with our fingers and hands, our progress through the book as the pile
of pages on the left side grows and the pile of pages on the right
side gets smaller. At the same time, we can be absolutely certain that
the technology [the book] will always work - there are no problems
with downloading, missing text due to technical or infrastructure
problems, etc."Mangen added that the e-reader experience introduces “a degree

of unpredictability and instability’’ that influences reading, even if
we are not aware of it.


Beam then quoted William Powers, who wrote "a romantic
defense of the ancient medium I publish in". Powers' 75-page essay,

“Hamlet’s BlackBerry: Why Paper Is Eternal,’’ -- set to be come a book
in the middle of 2010 from HarperCollins -- was widely quoted in the

blogosphere, with this passage often noted, and Beam noted it too:


“There are cognitive, cultural, and social dimensions to the
human-paper dynamic that come into play every time any kind of paper,
from a tiny Post-It note to a groaning Sunday newspaper, is used to
convey, retrieve, or store information.’’

Powers concluded: “It becomes a still point, an anchor for the
consciousness. It’s a trick the digital medium hasn’t mastered - not
yet.’’


So here's a question, now that you have scrolled down to the bottom
of this seemingly endless, bottomless Web page -- another of the drawbacks
to reading on screens, it might be noted: are you "screening" (to coin
a neologism)
this on a screen or are you reading it on paper?