The nature of reading is changing right before our very eyes: screening-reading is not really "reading" but a new mode of human reading called "screening"

The nature of reading is changing right before our very eyes




by Danny Bloom

OPED COMMENTARY to be read on paper or off a screen





NEW YORK -- 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 in

December of 2008, 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. MRI brain scans are showing this as proof.



* 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 on paper 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. I am beginning to call reading off screens (screen-reading) as

"screening", to coin a new term [with earlier multiple meanings].



Do you prefer reading or screening? Notice any differences in terms

of retention, processing, analysis and critical thinking? Join the club.

Reading on screens is NOT reading.







-------------------------



Danny Bloom is a freelancer writer and blogger

with a special interest in the future of reading.