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Urban (reading) Myth

Librarians say the rate of change in reading behaviors is accelerating and we are in the midst of a revolution in reading habits. (For example, The University of Iowa strategic plan for the Libraries, 2000-2004, cites “accelerating rate of change” as the main environmental factor.) This view is understandable as librarians rush to provide digital resources for enthusiastic, on-line readers.

The FotB perspective on change in reading habits is closer to an emphasis of book historians who say that reading behavior has an even more momentous past and the current developments are actually inevitable realizations of an accumulated complexity in the behaviors of readers. (This perspective is wonderfully expressed by contributions of Roger Chartier and Walter Ong in The Book History Reader, 2002.)

Change is Slowing

In other words, the rate of change in reading behaviors is not accelerating. Most of the technological shifts that resulted in current behavior change, such as instantaneous communication, photography, mass advertising, digital text and industrial production of print, actually occurred a century or more ago. These paradigm shifts cannot really be relocated into the present. Does change in reading behavior accelerate from the 19th to the 20th century and is it accelerating from the 20th century to the 21st? Perhaps we are actually now in a slow period as we adjust to accumulated change.

A even longer perspective also indicates that change in reading behaviors has slowed and, at the same time, that the magnitude of changes has diminished. Each transition from oral/aural communication to writing, from writing to print, and from print to a composite, screen based, reading mode has been less and less momentous and more and more accommodated. This important gradation is also observed by book historians. As increasingly different reading behaviors coexist, coevolve and accumulate, change slows down.

Starting from this position, that reading behavior change has a more momentous past and a slowing evolution, it is possible to question a current “revolution” in reading. More likely, an inevitability of slow transition is at work bringing readers to a complexity of increasing interactions of an increased number of reading modes. Another obvious momentum is advancing technological support that enables not only a composite, screen based reading mode, but also an eased realization of all the various delivery scenarios between parent reading modes. The classic, trans-mode delivery scenario of reading aloud to others is now crisscrossed with options including writing aloud to a list serve, speaking and listening to intraoffice writing, publishing on-line in response to a virtual symposium, printing web to paper for later reading or meta-reading of mining referers and scanning automated search queries.

But what about the “computer” revolution? Its always possible that programed pattern is as fundamental as time or space and that we are just now bringing this precept to every category of thought from science to spirituality. (As Stephen Wolfram contends in his book; A new Kind of Science, 2002.)

But programed pattern has long been a factor in reading behavior.

The question here is; what has the computer done for reading? The computer revolution has enabled the technical integration of three parent reading modes into a single screen based interface. It has also provided the reader with branching rather than linear progressions. But it has certainly been innocuous in changing reading habits! The persistent preference for a portrait format for a book page and a landscape, or field of view, for screen viewing, is a clue to the entrenched haptics of reading.

Reading Habits

Actually readers are not stubborn. E-book industry types may think otherwise as they continue to assert that readers “just don’t like to read from a screen”. Actually readers really do like to read from the screen as is evident by their enthusiasm for the Web. But , regarless of mode, readers are also very efficiency minded in that they want reading acts to produce comprehension.

When efficiency of comprehension is considered, some determinants of primeval origin come into play. These include the primate legacy of hands prompting the mind as well as refinements of the codex format that promote comprehension in book reading. Likewise, surprisingly, the screen based reading mode has also developed its own refinements to assist comprehension. These refinements were pioneered with film and television viewing, but have been accelerated with web site reading.

With screen based reading, a composite of the three parent modes (oral/aural, writing, print) is offered. Because of this complexity, the screen must present a world wide view, that is, a mobile and drifting collage of content from the three modes which is frequently displayed simultaneously. The point is that readers will only invest time in refined modes that assure efficient comprehension. As a result we find traffic seeking on-line presentations are now providing an arresting reading experience by refining and enculturating navigational maneuvers (pun intended).

The habit of seeking reading efficiency, either via an efficiency of a book page, or on an efficiency of a screen view, is an unchanging given. While the two reading modes, page based and screen based, are different, the reader wants a native efficiency in each. This underlying habit is constant.

(to be continued)