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?
One response
I have to say that this makes little sense to me. I’ve been reading newspapers and books all my life, and I have transferred the same skills effortlessly to reading off a screen. My previous experience in tracking down information from reliable sources serves me well on-line, and I have expanded that skill as necessary. I read non-fiction for both information and pleasure more often on-line than off these days, and even read fiction on-line now as well as in books, journals etc. I have no idea what this writer is even talking about: her basic premise seems totally erroneous, and the comment that “digital literacy” is as important and more practical than “print-reading comprehension” is utterly without meaning. Literacy is literacy, and a great number of young people who are posting comments on the Internet don’t have it. Period.
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