Literature Professor Speaks About the Differences Between Reading on Paper and Reading on a Screen

A well-known magazine essayist and Yale literature professor tells me via email: [webposted August 25, 2009]

Dear Mr Bloom,

Regarding your "screening" idea and campaign .... the crucial difference, it seems to me, is not between reading a screen and reading a printed page per se.

One can read, say, a novel on both, and I suspect there will be no essential difference for the brain (the eyes are another matter).

The real issue is the way people read on screen: the skipping, the skimming, the link-jumping, etc. And yes, I'm sure such changes would show up on a brain scan, and I daresay that that work is already being done or will be soon. It seems like people are brain scanning everything now.

As for a new term that will capture the phenomenon, the main problems with your suggesion of the word "screening," as I see it, are these:

1. It already means something else.
2. It's not very catchy.
3. People who read online are actually reading, even if they are reading differently.
4. New phenomena are far more often captured by shifts of or expansions in the meanings of existing words rather than through the coinage of new words.

However, if you want to call attention to the new phenomenon, an entirely new word..... would...... I feel..... be much more effective.

Yes, I agree that the new technology is affecting people's ability to think critically. This is not a new observation; people have been talking about this for a long time, and before that, there were saying it (justly) about television.

And yes, I do think we are at the beginning of a new literary age, a change that may ultimately prove as significant as the invention of printing.

What it will look like is anyone's guess.

As for whether we will still be reading printed books by the middle or end of the century, I would have been inclined a few months ago to say absolutely not. But now it seems like the codex (book) may prove to be a more resilient technology than we thought, simply because of its great utility. It has endured ever since it displaced the scroll about 2000 years ago, and it may continue to endure.

This is a good discussion you are sparking, and thanks for inviting me to say my say, too.

Signed,

_________ _ ____________
New Haven