Fact: The Internet changes how we read. But is reading on the internet not really “reading” at all? In a recent column in The New York Times Virginia Heffernan analyzes how her three year old son “reads” on Starfall, a website designed to teach young children to read. (Starfall, by the way, is the first Google result when you search “reading.”) What exactly is it that makes reading a physical book special? Maybe the difference is all in our heads. Mitika Brottman’s The Solitary Vice tell us that reading isn’t as transformative as we think. Sure, it’s fun, but it doesn’t – she argues – make you smarter, better or more interesting. Schools are pressing for digital literacy being as important as print reading comprehension (it is definitely more practical). Even librarians are being retrained. Do we just need a new vocabulary to differentiate the information-saturated internet reading from the experience-saturated book reading?
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