Nothing new but very true and maybe should be required reading for people who read >10000 words per day on-screen. Just something to keep in the back of your mind when you find yourself beginning to skim or click away. Solutions? Problem worth solving? As is so often the case, I think this an issue if the individual lets it become one. If you want to read and understand and remember the content, you will, and if you don't haptics aren't going to help. Some time in iso might. I've completely given up on 99 percent of my generation and await with morbid fascination the intellectual habits of the next few.
Also: You write: From the article:Nothing new
-I don't know.... I personally would have never guessed the following: (Interestingly, Coiro found that gamers were often better online readers: they were more comfortable in the medium and better able to stay on task.)
if they read the original texts on paper or a computer with no Internet access, their end product was superior to that of their Internet-enabled counterparts. If the online readers took notes on paper, however, the negative effects of Internet access were significantly reduced. It wasn’t the screen that disrupted the fuller synthesis of deep reading; it was the allure of multitasking on the Internet and a failure to properly mitigate its impact.
-This is fascinating to me. Simply having internet access creates an environment where you know you have options to click away and thus need to be prepared to manage your behaviors in a different way. I've completely given up on 99 percent of my generation and await with morbid fascination the intellectual habits of the next few.
-I'm not so sure it's worth abandoning an entire generation. There are a number of your contemporaries on Hubski that impress me. That said, I think this website expects more from people. I think that is a huge part of the problem. Not enough online forums and spaces expect much of us. It's a giant race to the bottom and the finish line is sponsored by Buzzfeed. Institutions, both online and IRL tend to expect very little from us. This is one of the reasons I like the New Yorker. They've been able to maintain a legacy of quality long-form content in the face of a click-bat culture. While the backgrounds of the writers varied, a theme began to emerge: the more reading moved online, the less students seemed to understand.
-lil, as a professor that has taught throughout this transition, would you agree that the more reading that occurred online, the less students seem to understand/retain?
There is no question that on-line reading has had deleterious effects on my students. I have to take this into account all the time now. While they clamour for a digital version of my handouts so that they can search for relevant terms, I continue to use paper. I give them highlighters and tell them what to highlight as we discuss pages and do activities from the pages. The physical act of highlighting terms and doing written and roleplaying activities -- because it is active and involves hands as well as eyes -- reinforces the material.
I can definitely say that I don't miss newspapers. I'm equally happy, if not more so, reading the news on my computer. I like that hyperlinks exist, and they can lead to some very interesting reading in a way that a newspaper never could. That said, books are king. I won't buy an e-reader until I lack any other choice. Given the abundance of used books, I think that I probably don't have to worry about it in the near future, perhaps ever. While I agree with you that a truly engaged reader may be medium insensitive, I just completely lack any kind of attraction to a Kindle, Nook or iPad. Turning a page as an act can be experiential, especially when reading a very suspenseful or powerful portion of a novel, for example. To me, there's a qualitative divide between informational reading and "pleasure" reading (e.g. a novel, history, or creative nonfiction--I can't find a better word than pleasure at the moment). Maybe I don't get as absorbed reading about what happened to the stock market yesterday, but I don't think I need to be, either. It would be interesting if they repeated the reading comprehension study with a technical or informative piece rather than a work of fiction. In the end, I see no reason why digital and print can't co-exist. They enable different sorts of experiences and are optimal for different sorts of work.Solutions? Problem worth solving? As is so often the case, I think this an issue if the individual lets it become one. If you want to read and understand and remember the content, you will, and if you don't haptics aren't going to help. Some time in iso might.
You know where a newspaper is nice? A bar. Come in for brunch, read the sections you want, steal the crossword or sudoku, but then leave the paper for someone else. Pass it on. I've done that once and it's been really nice. I prefer a newspaper to using my phone for entertainment. I mean, I people-watch, but I can't people-watch constantly. It's nice to actually have an activity besides watching and drinking. Meanwhile, the general reception to reading a book at a bar seems to be that you are stuck up. (I am not saying this is my personal opinion. I'd recommend a thinner book over a mighty tome though if you are going to go this route.)
As I read this article, I notice how guilty I am of ALL of the things the author is mentioning. Hopefully I can remember to become a more thoughtful reader. I do love books, but I find there are often so many other things I would rather be watching or reading online - perhaps It's just been a while since I read a good book. "The Old Man and the Sea" was, as mentioned elsewhere, a bust, but I read it in the bathroom so I wasn't doing anything else important anyways. I'm starting up Tolkien's version of Beowulf now, and that seems to be pretty good so far. We'll see though.
Why stop this discussion at reading comprehension, digital vs. physical? I would like to see how reading comprehension (both sorts; any sort you can come up with and test) compares to audio comprehension - you know, someone reading a book vs. having a book read to them. I realize that's not the author's point but I think that would be interesting as well. I think that it's not impossible that some people prefer online reading, or physical reading, and others may prefer to hear things read to them instead. I confess: I cannot listen to audiobooks. Or, rather, I can, but I couldn't tell you a single thing that happened. My comprehension goes out the window. I tend to have difficulty doing anything while holding a conversation - I'm okay at typing/speaking if I have what I am going to say in both mediums already plotted out, but otherwise, if I want to know what is being said with good confidence, I have to turn off music, look at the person speaking, and so on. I find it near impossible to drive and talk on the phone. I don't do it, not because of safety concerns, but because I just don't feel like I can concentrate on both at all and I'd rather use the concentration on driving. I know the conversation will go in one ear and out the other. And generally if I am having a conversation with you on the phone I like you and want to remember our conversation. Also, I'd like to not be worried about dying. (I guess it kind of is a safety thing, but it's because I know I simply can't concentrate and I don't feel good. It's more instinct than ingrained.) It is even difficult for me to explain to you what happened in a poem, a single short poem, if I only hear it once and do not have it in front of me. I truly feel that in order to 'know' a written work I must read it. however I know there are many avid audiophiles out there on Hubski! Not tagging kleinbl00! Is there any other way you can think of to consume what originally started as written media? If your school textbooks were broken up into short films, how would that impact you do you think? I knew a girl who memorized things by creating musical mnemotics. I guess that's not quite the same though. I'm not criticizing the original article - but I just do know that I have marked difficulties with audio comprehension, and wonder if maybe looking at other styles too or other types of readers could give more insight. For instance, do poor performing readers perform even more poorly when reading digitally? If deep reading is a bridge to thought, do we not reap those benefits by listening to an audio recording of a book?
I've finished 10 audiobooks in the last 5 months, and I've started-and-returned about 4 books. In total that's around 80 hours of audiobook time and 40 hours of listening time (I listen on 2x). On top of that I listen to an equal amount of podcasts, so I think I can stand in for kb as avid audio-consumer. I mostly listen during train commutes, bike commutes, doing chores. I like audiobooks, as they allow me to learn while doing boring / menial tasks. I don't often drive and listen, roads are just a bit too busy around here. Audiobooks are not the same as a phone conversation though - I can zone out of an audiobook when I need to and just rewind the book later. Phone conversations require much more attention, so much so that driving and calling can have an effect on your driving similar to being intoxicated. While I agree that reading is much better for thoroughly / deeply understanding the book, I just read much much more because of audiobooks. The amount of non-academic books I've finished in the last year can be counted on one hand. Besides, the performance of the narrator can add a lot. I found someone like Jon Ronson very entertaining to listen to. When the book is about something profound or about an emotional scene, it hits much harder when an actual person is talking to you.
I found this paragraph hysterical. Done on purpose?
I had a Nook when it first came out and then got a Kindle Fire (which I still use occasionally) about 3 years ago. I find the e-readers have both advantages and disadvantages. Someone can recommend a book and I can purchase it on Amazon, have it sent straight to my Kindle, and start reading it within 2 minutes. With a physical book, I have to either go to the store or wait for it to arrive, and then become re-inspired to read the book. Because of this, I have a ton of half-completed book sitting in my Kindle that will never be finished. When I am consistently reading, I do read more on the Kindle. I often read a couple books at once and I am never scared that I will finish the book and have nothing to read. This is especially nice when traveling. I purchased my Elon Musk book in hardcover to see if the reading experience would be different or if I would be more likely to finish it. I like feeling the pages and the heft of the book – I've forgotten how different it is to read a hardcover. Lugging that thing around is not nearly as nice, though. I think the biggest reasons we are seeing reading comprehension and "deep reading" disappear is distractions, multitasking, and the "I have better (other) things to do" mentality. There is always something else out there that is better, or different, or may be better. Anything I read is competing with the potential of other things I could be doing and reading. During the course of reading this article, I stopped maybe 100 times. I got six emails (I read and responded to five of them and added the last to my calendar), 2 google hangout messages (ignored, for now), and passively digested a conversation between two colleagues about the new design plan and client feedback. My email, skype, slack, trello, asana, and google hangouts reside on my second monitor, about 6 inches away from the window with this article. I only have to shift my eyes to see incoming information. I do not do anything completely or thoroughly until ~8pm when the notifications start slowing down and messages can be safely ignored until morning. Multitasking is not a good thing, but I'm unsure of how be successful, maintain client and team relationships, and get work done without it. The amount of shit that happens in a week due to this incessant multitasking - especially on my agile teams - is fucking bonkers. My clients that live in the old school world of a "schedule a meeting next week to discuss" are literally miles behind. I've done the same amount of work in one night as they have accomplished in the last 6 months. I do not receive an email longer than 6 lines. Anything longer than 6 lines is formatted in a numbered list. 99% of the contacts and scopes of work I deal with are standardized and any out of the ordinary lines are highlighted. Not that I read them anyways – I send them to my lawyer to read. Grammar, punctuation and sentence structure come second to clarity and using less words. Subject lines are optimized, CC's better be used fucking correctly, and I've seen search keywords included in the bottoms of emails that will need to be referenced later. In fact, I had to go back 5 hours to find an email that was an actual sentence, not a snippet or list. Interestingly, it was from b_b, and was witty over productive. There is no doubt that all this is different than the way we used to read – but is it really a problem? Would better reading comprehension be better? Probably. But why? What issues does it solve? Why does it make my life better? Or human kind's collective life better? We adapt very quickly to changing environments and changes result in progress in the long run, even if we lose something nostalgic or tangible in the process. Calculators dominate now, even if we lost the epicness of punch cards or chalk on blackboards. We read by skimming so my emails are now formatted with the expectation that I skim them. Etc. Etc. Etc.Maybe the decline of deep reading isn’t due to reading skill atrophy but to the need to develop a very different sort of skill, that of teaching yourself to focus your attention.