The nature of reading is changing right before our eyes

The nature of reading is changing right before our eyes

by Danny Bloom
OPED COMMENTARY, unpublished as of September 7, 2009

Do we read differently on the computer screen from how we
read on the
printed page? The answer, of course, is yes. But just how different
and what it means are issues that need further study.


Anne Mangen, a reading specialist at the
University of Stavanger in Norway,is one of the leading researchers
concerned with these differences.
In an academic paper published in the Journal of Research on Reading last
December, Mangen listed a few reasons that reading on paper
and reading on a screen are different from each other. According to her\
research, and in her opinion:.

* Reading on a screen is not as rewarding -- or effective -- as
reading printed words on paper.

* The process of reading on a screen involves so much physical
manipulation of the
computer that it interferes with our ability to focus on and
appreciate what we're reading.

* Online text moves up and down the
screen and lacks physical dimension, robbing us of a feeling of
completeness.

* The visual happenings on a compter screen and our physical interaction
with the entire device and its set ip can be distracting. All of these things
tax human cognition and concentration in a way that a book or
newspaper or magazine does not.

* The experience of reading a book or a newspaper or a magazine is
both a story experience and a tactile one.

When I asked Mim Harrison, a book editor in Florida, about this, she said: "I find the
differences between reading on paper and reading on a screen to be intriguing, and it
certainly gives one pause to consider just what it is we're doing
with our eyeballs these days."

The experience of reading on a screen is fundamentally different from reading
on paper," a leading futurist and cultural forecaster in California told me, adding: "Not a priori worse or better; just different."Mangen's research, and the work of other people, too, are important in terms of drawing people's attention to the vast literary
shift about to wash over us."

Bill Hill, a former Microsoft web designer from Scotland who is
still based in the Seattle area, told me that one reason that reading
on screens is still a bit problematical is because "we are still
paying the price of an engineering shortcut taken sixteen years ago."

Say that again? HIll continued: "Sixteen
years ago, when the programmers at the NSCA were creating Mosaic, the
first Web browser, they made an engineering decision based on
expediency. They took an easy option -- for which we're all still
paying a huge price in terms of the readability of the Web."

They opted for scrolling, Hill said.Big mistake!

"Type, and layout, has evolved over the 5,500 years since writing
systems first appeared," Hill says, "and especially since the
widespread adoption of Gutenberg's moveable metal type -- to optimize
for the way human vision works. Sure, you can learn to make do with
scrolling to read, if there's nothing better. And there's no choice on
the Web today. And that's what we need to fix to make reading -- and design --
first-class citizens on the Web."

Reading on paper will be with us for a long time to come, most experts believe,
but reading on screens is changing the way we experience "reading" as well. What
these differences mean is still poorly understood and needs to be studied by
reading specialists, Web readability experts and technology gurus.

Reading will always be reading. But it's changing right before our very eyes as well.



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Danny Bloom is a freelancer writer and blogger
based in Taiwan with a special interest in the future of reading.