Another sign that we’re at the turn of a Millennium and the crazy ideas are still coming out:
First up:
An editorial saying that e-readers make it too easy to read and maybe they shuold have a feature that makes them gharder to read so that we read slower (on the dubious pretext that slower reading is more thoughtful).
The Future Of Reading
by Jonah Lehrer
“So here’s my wish for e-readers. I’d love them to include a feature that allows us to undo their ease, to make the act of reading just a little bit more difficult. Perhaps we need to alter the fonts, or reduce the contrast, or invert the monochrome color scheme. Our eyes will need to struggle, and we’ll certainly read slower, but that’s the point: Only then will we process the text a little less unconsciously, with less reliance on the ventral pathway. We won’t just scan the words – we will contemplate their meaning.”
And here’s a wonderful retort:
Awwww … Kindle and Nook make it too easy to read
“The Kindle and Nook are bad, evil eReaders. They make it too easy to read. … Awwwwwww! What a bunch of nonsense. There are times when super-intelligent people get stuck in their own heads. This is one of those times.”
Fun reading for the weekend.
Stephen
2 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
Reminds me of last year’s SLA Annual closing keynote speaker, Nicholas Carr, who is trying to keep his negative wave going after “IT Doesn’t Matter”. I was surprised that such a forward-thinking group like SLA would have a keynote speaker talk about how people are getting stupid because of the internet and the solution is to have more people read print-on-paper books. Wonderful idea… not…
Sir…. good post, but there’s more to Jonah’s blog post of the Daily Mail piece in the UK than you talk about here. In fact, reading off screens is inferior to reading same text on paper surfaces in terms of brain chemistry and future and current MRI and PET scan studies will show this as fact. Different regions of the brain light up when we read on paper surfaces vs screened surfaces …and these regions are superior not for immediate comprehension, they are the same for that, …..but superior, yes, for processing of info, retention of info, analysis of info and critical thinking skills about the info. I am not saying this as a member of the publishing or book communtiy, nor am i in anyone’s pocket. I am saying this as an indie researcher in Taiwan with Dr Anne Mangen in Norway as my mentor. You will see. Screen-reading, what i call screening, is cool and wonderful, yes., but it is not reading…. it is screening. Future reseearch will confirm this. You have been alerted.