In defense of online reading

Last winter my CCIV teacher challenged us on how many books we read throughout the semester. I really wanted to tell him, I read A LOT everyday. I am very addicted to reading but I never called myself a “bookworm”. Because what I read aren’t books, they are online novels.

Literacy Debate - Online, R U Really Reading?
Children are clearly spending more time on the Internet. In a study of 2,032 representative 8- to 18-year-olds, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that nearly half used the Internet on a typical day in 2004, up from just under a quarter in 1999. The average time these children spent online on a typical day rose to one hour and 41 minutes in 2004, from 46 minutes in 1999.

The debate over online VS hardcopy literacy isn’t a new topic. But it is an issue I really wanted to discuss about. This is probably one of the reasons why I chose this course – I wanted to defense myself! There are few selected questions raised in the debate:

* Does Internet diminish reading?

Some argue the information online readers get is less in-depth, and highly narrowed because users scan, but not read. And with free will to click on a hyperlink, online readers have excessive selectivity on incoming sources.

“Online readers of the Times appear to have read fewer national, international, and political news stories [than readers of print version] and were less likely to recognize and recall events that occurred during the exposure period.”
said Tewksbury and Althus in the article Differences in knowledge acquisition among readers of the paper and online versions of national newspapers (2006)

But in contrast, on the Internet we read more from all possible angles. With hyerlinks and search engines, we gain access to sources from any parts of the world, from a specialist on the event to a small potato like you and I. Reading online is not just a one-way relationship between author and readers, but like a conversation or discussion between all people who are interested in that topic. The Web is a platform where collective productivity is encouraged for everyone to take multiple roles from creating news to commenting, from learning to teaching.·      

* Does online reading affect people’s comprehension skills?

A lot of critics suggest so. Dana Gioia, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, suggests a national decline in test scores of reading ability and reading comprehension. Nicholas Carr in his articale Is Google Making Us Stupid? also makes a smiliar statement that “what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation.”

But to me, reading in print and on the Internet are different skills. On a book, text is linear and sequential. There is a predetermined order, where readers are guided through author’s vision. On Net, readers skate through hypertexts and hyperlinks at will and, in effect, compose their own sequence of information.

I personally find these reading in print and online separate skills, and both are fundamental for us. Seriously can you find a modern workplace without either books or computers? Probably not. Even small companies are introducing technologies in their business. CityU, for instance, is requiring us not only to read books, but also to research online for reference materials.

Video: A Family of Readers  

Jane Sims and her husband, David, spend hours reading newspapers, magazines and books. Their children spend most of their reading time online. 

To conclude this post, I would like to suggest that neither actual publications nor online reading could replace one and other. They give readers different ways of experiencing and interpreting things. And essentially both skills to read in paper and online are critical in our career.

Further readings available here.