Digital reading

Since you're reading this here online (unless you printed out a copy for posterity) you, like many of us these days, are a digital reader. Apparently you, like me, are part of a passionate debate about what it means to read in the digital age. As I work in publishing, this is pertinent to my interests.

While I do not read novels online, yet, I have long been reading newspapers online, even after purchasing the offline, hard copy versions (sometimes paper is best, but online can't be beat when you want the West Coast baseball scores). Digital reading lets me read and investigate many more news sources than I would if I were limited to print. In the publishing company I work for (editing and writing treatises for professionals), the print version of our materials still does very well, however their online cousins can link out to other related items, allowing users to check cross references and to see if the print material is still accurate.

Apparently, according to some, all this online reading means I am not reading at all (I wish someone would tell that to my eye doctor). Part of the "problem" is that fewer of us are reading for fun or sitting down and reading longer stories in lieu of zig zagging off to another place --- still there? I promise I won't be much longer as I need to hop onto ESPN to check out the scores from last night before zipping onto another news site, that is after I hit my Facebook page to see if there are any good messages, which I'll get to after I read my e-mails.... Hmm, where was I? Oh yeah! Reading is fundamental!

Anyway, the issue appears to be a lack of linear reading, as the net chips away at ... uh ... the ability to .... oh, sorry, just reading a funny comment on fark ... anyway, the net is limiting the ability of us to concentrate on one thing for a long period of time, according to whoever was quoted in the story I linked to above (sigh ... [alt][tab] ... this dude), arguing that though our children know more bits of information on various topics they don't know anything because they are not reading novels and thinking about what was written.

I suppose that is a fair opinion but, as I recall my childhood, and, in the days before video games and hundreds of the cable channels, my various reading appetite (lived in the city and had little money as my mother was a laid off school teacher), I don't recall really ruminating about a novel until I was a late teenager, and even then, it was just for school. I didn't read classics like Catcher in the Rye or Grapes of Wrath (I linked to the Cliff Notes if you want to take 5) until I was well into my 20s and 30s. Of course, it helped I had, and still do, a long commute on mass transit and needed something to do aside from sleeping or staring into the abyss.

Although I read more and more online these days, I read novels because I want to. Perhaps some of this is due to the reading habits I acquired as a child or my long commute. But I think part of it is that I, like many others, still like to get lost in a novel. I've noticed that those my age who like to read do so because they enjoy a good book and those who don't read often, preferring to surf the net, probably wouldn't be reading novels anyway. As to the argument that reading novels has helped me to evaluate information, reading various opinions on various topics, as I try to weed out whose opinion is most trustworthy, does the same.

However, I wonder what those online readers would be doing if not for reading online. I know my online searching and what not has replaced much more TV relax time over reading a novel relax time. While my children are still too young to be reading novels (or in the case of the youngest, too young to read), I want to make sure they are learning skills that will help them in life. Watching TV probably won't, doing research on the internet probably will. So they may not learn how to think for themselves, such as contemplating what the author really meant in a passage and how those words apply to life, the same way I did as their evaluation will come from comparing various sources. As long as my children are reading something worthwhile, and expanding their knowledge, be it online or off, in lieu of watching some idiotic cartoon on TV, I will be satisfied.