this was a very interesting read thanks for posting, i choose cyberspace btw

Sven’s position is blurry, but appealing in its romance. He seems to be unclear what exactly he is defending, but very clear that, whatever it is, its a very precious and dear thing. He raises the legitimate criticism that, for now, the Internet is not a very good fictional story-teller. Perhaps its because the flood of subjectivity washes the very idea of fixed, linear fiction into a sea of fan-fiction and mashups. Maybe we have to update not just the concepts of reading or books, but the concept of stories, even outside their containers.

As far as screen vs. page goes: McLuhan observed that any change in our media changes our perception. Hegelian zeitgeist observed that meaning also changes based on culture. Today, both change rapidly and constantly. Tolstoy is not the same on a Kindle as on a page. But as Jeremy points out, this is all for the better, for it is these differences that train you to switch seamlessly between the deep, contemplative thinking that Carr and Sven hold dear, and the pond-skimming, thin-slicing so passionately defended by Shirky.

My full response (to the whole debate), entitled Fearing Digital Literacy, can be found here.

For me, I spent the first twelve years of my life almost completely separated from modern technology. I ran into old computers in preschool once, and a few times here and there in grade school. But there wasn’t one of my own in my house till I went through the effort to earn the money for one right before I went into highschool.

I bit my teeth on classic scifi. I have more than four hundred novels, most of them science fiction and fantasy, but some of the classics.

I also have an assus eeepc. And I find that when I can’t find a volume in paper, I go out, get the entire series in some digital format, and read it on the little computer. Minus the fact that the digital copies don’t look as nice on my shelf, to me, the experience is much the same. Also, for scientific and technical information, I find that digital often works BETTER for me. The latest information isn’t in a book printed last year.

I don’t think digital copies will ever surpass paper for me because I enjoy having the novels on my shelves. But for convenience and portability? Nothing beets digital.

I read books on a screen easily - a good quality monitor is no harder to read than a printed book. And if it’s a badly printed book, it may be easier. If we’re talking paperback novels, I could go either way very easily.

Hardback books are another story. There’s something about sprawling across the couch with a hardback book that adds to the experience. Something about the weight of the book, the heavy paper, the texture and smell of it - I don’t know exactly. I don’t find it with all stories, but I have some authors and some genres that are just more enjoyable in hardback.

My main objection to online reading is the cost - the cost of the device, and then the cost of downloading the books. Sure, many classics and partial books are available for free, but the stuff I really want to dedicate that much of my time to is not free - it’s contemporary literature. I haven’t looked at prices in about six months, but the last time I did the price of an electronic book was generally a dollar or more higher than the cost of the printed book.

For that, I might as well get the printed copy, forget the expensive reader, and not have to worry about charging the batteries. Of course, I do have to store and - eventually - dispose of those paperbacks when they no longer interest me.

Nobody says a word about the pain in the eyes, the focus fixed for hours, the dryed eyes… I read online, but my eyes impede me stay reading more than an hour or so… With books (paper) I don’t have this problem…

I want to believe. I want to read on electronic devices. I want to ‘feel’ the calm, the engagement and enter that inner space that for me at least comes from dead tree versions.

Marshall McCluhan: ‘the medium is the message’ - is the device part of the message? A book is single focus, almost impossible to have ‘continuous partial attention’ whilst reading. Are multi-focus devices (including the kindle) part of the problem?

I continue to try, and recently read ‘Roo’d’ on the iphone: loved the white text on black background, all other lights off, in bed at night - falling asleep whilst reading, and then not waking up with the ‘book’ digging in to me!

I want to be able to carry my whole library with me, I want to be able to free up space in my house currently filled with paper copies (the ipod experience in print effectively). I also want a device with enough real estate, robustness and ease of use. We aren’t quite there yet.

Thanks KK for the inspirations.

I used to have a Newton Messagepad, which in response to a “bigger iphone scree”, well, that was it. and it came out just 2 years after the 1st public url. (atleast i think it came out in 1993). I spent many hours reading great works of classic fiction (thanks to project guttenburg and newton user groups) on my Newton while riding the city bus to and from work and school and home and also while sitting at coffee shops. The huge indiglo backlit screen was much much more gentle, that is to say more readable, than the CRT monitor i am staring at right now and for the last 2 hours. PLus the battery would last for 2 weeks!!! And i took copious notes of lectures at school on the Newton in my own normal handwriting! And i listened to music on it! I am fully aware that the Newton was simply too ahead of its time but i have to laugh to myself when i realize that what people keep clamoring for was already invented more than 10 years ago. It was mass manufactured, misunderstood, thrown away and forgotten. I am a reader, and i feel very strongly about the astounding illiteracy of the next generation of youth from current 19 and 20 yearolds and elementary kids. It is alarming and disturbing to realize just how many kids are distracted by mtv and myspace and even ipods. they will not have an understanding of the world of literature besides harry potter. And that is a “fantasy” world that may lead to a bewildered illiterate new world. i would like to write more but i am just passing the halfway mark in “Atlas Shrugged” and i’m thirsty for that ending.

What do you think about expanding the reading space to include other dimensions? For example, the length of a given text is likely just as distinctive as whether its fiction or not, as would be the level of interactivity. I’ve just posted something on this at http://backstrip.net/post/44755699/reading-space-the-long-and-the-short-of-it

Actually, I read my kindle in the bathtub. I have a plank that goes across the tub which I set it on. I also read paper books in the tub.

I have been known to take my laptop into the bathroom as well. Don’t tell anyone.

We’re all mummers here. We think we know what we’re talking about, but what really do we know? Can any of us perceive the world as, say, Henry James or James Joyce did? How about Tolstoy? Homer? Even Haruki Murakami? All of these authors exist in different worlds, different cultural contexts, and their means of appreciating the written (or spoken) word vary wildly. Throughout history, the contours of “literature space” have been in constant flux, and it’s as ridiculous to assert an equivalence between media as it is to assign relative value. For better or worse, electronic media are here, and they are reforming our consciousness — to the degree that the young man reading classics on his PDA honestly can’t see how radically altered his experience of those works truly is. Get yourself born a hundred and fifty years ago and read Melville by candle-light, and tell me it’s the same as reading him off a Blackberry in line at the bank!

I read Neal Stephenson’s wonderful “Cryptonomicon” when it first came out years ago. I bought the 928 hardcover and loved it. When it came time to read it again (some books need multiple readings, eh?), I bought the eBook for around $7, despite the fact that I still own the hardcover. Why? Because I already carry around my phone (Pocket PC_, and the 3 lb. hardcover is just a bear to lug.

So… was my reading experience on the phone different? Of course. I was able to read in more places and in more circumstances. I “whiped out” the phone while in line at the bank and read for 5-10 minutes. I read comfortably while standing almost anywhere. I caught a half hour to read while waiting for a film to start. I read while lying in bed, which is harder with a heavy hardcover. I could read in low light without bothering my wife, as my screen is backlit.

The whole “you can’t read an eBook on the beach or in the tub” argument is, I think, a complete read (sic) herring. How many books have you read on the beach or in the tub? There are far more times when you are in circumstances where a book on your phone would be much handier, especially when you compare the ability to have many books on one device and download directly from the Web.

The device isn’t the issue, really. If you take the time, you can become comfortable with different containers for your media and enjoy them for their differences. The issue, I think, is one of distraction.

Which makes the big question this: is the Web inherently distracting? Or is it any more distracting than that which distracts us apart from the Web?

For me, “reading space” is a place inside me. It can happen in a nice, quiet library or den, in my living room, on a bus, in a noisy restaurant… almost anywhere. The “space” is my permission to myself to enter into the work.

More doorways into reading means more time spent in that place. More is better.

This is a good expansion on the NYT article. I only skimmed it when it appeared in my hometown newspaper. Because KK addressed it here, I linked to the NYT web edition and read the whole thing. This is Intermedia in action.

The main concern seems to be for the next generation. I recall similar concerns about my generation being “raised by television”. My grandparents probably fretted over how the telephone was killing the gentle art of correspondence.

I have two teenagers. One reads, the other doesn’t.

The reader spends about as much time browzing the web while watching TV as she does quietly immersed books on American history. She wrote fan fiction when younger and writes well today.

We read to both of them when young, made books available, but it just didn’t “take” with the non-reader. She simply has no appetite for elective reading. She spends her free time reviewing Myspace pages, searching for music videos (we don’t have cable), texting her friends… and browzing while watching television.

She has learned how to glean answers from high-school textbooks, but she doesn’t write well. I’m afraid that she will not learn to think well… to use language skills to sort out conflicting ideas and emotions, to detect rhetorical manipulation, and to compose her thoughts and opinions coherently.

This, I believe, is the great contribution of reading book-length works of fact or fiction, no matter what the medium.

When you eat a soup is it the same if you eat it with a fork or with a spun? Does the soup tastes the same if the spun is very small or very large?

No it doesn’t, it tastes different.

Try eating a soup without a spun (just grab the bowl and drink it),it is a completely different experience, even if at then end the soup ends up in your stomach.

Even if reading is an intellectual activity, it is affected by all of our senses. Reading in a screen is not the same as grabbing your book, locking yourself in a library (or in the middle of a forest) and enjoying a Kawabata poem. When you grab a book you don’t plan for distractions, when you grab a computer you enter the “multitask mode”. This clearly affects our reading behaviors, and hence the way we digest the information.

I’m not saying that either way is better or worse, I’m just stating that it is different.

You can’t after all have the same experience of reading a book peacefully on a beach, than grabbing your laptop and taking it to the beach (you’ll be worried about battery, about sand, about water, and you won’t even be able to read clearly if the sun is on top of your head, hence, you won’t read at all)

BTW: You can’t compare reading online vs reading on a kindle. A kindle doesn’t have MSN, or Facebook, so you don’t enter the multitask mode when grabbing a kindle. You do the second you think about putting your hands in a computer.

Funny… I’m going to read this article with Instapaper, an iPhone app that allows offline reading of web pages. I’m also planning to read online serialized books with that App.

An iPhone with a bigger screen - an iPhone Tablet, (an iTablet) would be for me the ultimate reading/browsing tool…

Books aren’t equipped with instant messaging and social networking though. This isn’t a positive or negative thing, but surely it impacts at least the intensity of spending hours in ones living room reading an entire book.

I think the Kindle vs. paperback book test is a good one. How do we react to even the smallest changes in our experience in reading. From page turning to scrolling (or pressing next page?), from paper reflecting light into our eyes to a screen sending it directly etc. At what point in the spectrum from book to screen does any major change in our brains occur. My suspicion is that any little change in the technology of reading is vastly overshadowed by our environments.