Thursday, September 9, 2010

What do you use to read?

Myself, I prefer good old-fashioned ink on paper. Or at least that's how I answered the question, until I realized - well, I do my daily reading such as news, blog posts, zines, etc. on the internet. This prompted me to wonder, with the onslaught of various e-readers being released and more and more printed books/newspapers/magazines going mostly digital, how does everyone else read? More importantly, is the medium they are using to read affecting the way they digest the information? I want to focus specifically on reading for pleasure, because I am adamantly opposed to e-reading. I am too addicted to the romanticism of books - used, new, front covers torn off, food stains on the pages, crisp paper, anything.
I found a few articles relevant to my topic by doing a quick Google search. One from the Wall Street Journal online cites a study of e-reader owners that found that 40% of them said they now read more than they did with print books. Amazon says its customers buy 3.3 times as many books after buying a Kindle, suggesting that e-books aren't replacing people's old book habits, but adding to them.
Okay, so people are buying and reading more books. But how much of the content are they actually absorbing? How 'lost' in the books are they allowing themselves to get? Are they finishing whole books, or just addicted to the ease of instant access? The article goes on to say that Jeff Bezos (the creator of the Kindle) says he "set out to develop technology that could encourage long-form reading, instead of just snippets". That's admirable, but how many people are actually using e-readers this way?
I found another article from the New York Times online that deals with some of the same issues. Steven Johnson, the founder of an online magazine called Feed (it's pretty cool; www.feedmag.com) is quoted a few times in the article, once expressing his fears for the future of reading:
"...one of the great joys of book reading - the total immersion in another world, or in the world of the author's ideas - will be compromised. We may all read books the way we increasingly read magazines and newspapers: a little bit here, a little bit there".
I tend to agree with him. He also mentions later that this new digital era of book reading will turn reading into a more "social act", and I honestly don't know how I feel about that.
I suppose after writing this paper and (hopefully) learning more about how we absorb information that's received digitally, I will be able to form more opinions on this subject.

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