We seem to have fetishised reading. It's not necessarily a good in itself; it's a medium and as such has ideological and psychological consequences (some of which were bemoaned with the advent of mass printing). Let's just recall: when we go on the internet a lot of what's involved is reading. It's part of our communicative repertoire; it doesn't have to be done in mega doses. I suspect that behind this is a moral panic devolving from 'high cultural' norms and hegemonic moves.
Now I think that the following quote is more 'on the money':
"print literacy has been one of the building blocks in the formation of the modern sense of self. By contrast, screen reading, a historically recent arrival, encourages a different kind of self-conception, one based on interaction and dependent on the feedback of others. It rewards participation and performance, not contemplation. It is, to borrow a characterization from sociologist David Riesman, a kind of literacy more comfortable for the “outer-directed” personality who takes his cues from others and constantly reinvents himself than for the “inner-directed” personality whose values are less flexible but also less susceptible to outside pressures. How does a culture of digitally literate, outer-directed personalities “read”?". In fact, I think I said -that is wrote (and is that an interesting an significant carry-over of a semantic field?)- something along those lines not so long ago.
As one of those 'outer directed' types, I can't help wondering 'why is this a bad thing?' -Oh that's right; because it potentially shifts power. Welcome to my world. And the answer to that rhetorcal (?) question ending the quote might well be 'collaboratively' -which is what happens anyway even among academics who are well-formed by the inner-directed praxes of academia: 'college' comes from the Latin for reading together, for example. And what about all those colloquies and symposia?
Which rather belies the anti-paeon ending with the quote "“Surrendering to the organizing logic of a book is, after all, the way one learns,”"
No it isn't.
Dialoguing with it interiorly or extoriorly, learning to relate it to our own experience, values and a prioris and so forth (look at educational research, for goodness sake) is how we learn. Just because the writer of this piece has got how to do that with books down pat and has made a relative success in a print-media world doesn't mean it's right for all and ever, and in facts acts ideologically and mythically to justify her preferred ways and to maintain others in relative powerlessness.
Yes, we should be alert to the way that the newer literacies based on newer technologies alter our sensorium and our mentalities; but we need to be wary of making simple 'old=good, new=bad' judgements such as this article, in its oh-so-reasonable way ends up doing. To be sure, it does keep wandering into engaging with counter-views, but fails to critique its own sureties (for example; the 'bad' habits of screen reading seem to apply to many readers of newspapers and magazines).
At the end of the day the kind of position that the author is setting out seems limited by the apparent inability to imagine things could be different and still well. Or to be prepared to imagine that there could be positive and good effects in different ways of handling information and of thinking (as well as difficulties in the old -which we largely don't notice because we're too used to them and no longer notice our coping mechanisms). "The old is better". But then again, new wine can be viewed positively...
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