If you read, does it matter where you read?

Spider

Tue Jul 29 00:14:36 -0700 2008

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From old geezer...........perhaps they never find an ending.

If you read, does it matter where you read?

KlaymenDK

Tue Jul 29 00:54:50 -0700 2008

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I'd have to agree very much with zogger on this one. 98%/2%, but brought up squarely on paperback so-called 'pocket' novels and library books. I think I started reading exclusively in English in about 8th grade (I'm a Dane), which really boosted my vocabulary and spelling.

I don't know how much of a whippersnapper I am, being 34, but I don't think that one even could (pleasantly at least) read anything much online until 10 years ago -- before the Internet, content was hard to come by, and even after it took some time for the, shall we say, presentation to become bearable.

But reading online, I do plenty of that. Perhaps not so much for the pace of it, a lot of what I find online seems to want  to rush and stress me (I do what I can with adblockers, and read the 'for print' style when available). Rather, I read mostly online because that's where I can find the style and type of reading material I'm after. 365tomorrows is a fun stop during morning coffee, five minutes worth of sci-fi, different every day.
I'm of course talking about prose here, not news; although some of the longer articles here and at kuroshin are long and interesting enough to blur that distinction a great deal. For news, I rarely read the paper that we get at home (being a geek, normal newspapers bore me).

But when I read longer stuff, and I do, I really prefer the shameless dead-tree version. Currently, I'm reading 'The Career Programmer', 'The Science of God', and Doctorow's 'Little Brother', all in paper versions.
Here at work we have a subscription to Books24x7, an online reference library where you can read via the browser ... but only half a page at the time. That  stinks so much that I've been copying (half a page at the time) entire books into OOo Writer, then reading them there, or printing them.

If you read, does it matter where you read?

Chris Collins

Tue Jul 29 07:54:12 -0700 2008

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I also agree on the percentages Zogger has come up with, but probably not the same split.  While probably 98% of my reading is online in some form or another, the distinction between that type of reading and the type of reading I do offline is, I think, important.

I read (just read; combine a string of words into a sentence I can understand) online, but probably 50% of that reading can be summed up to reading in the sense that you read a sign or billboard.  The other 50% of my online reading is usually reading correspondences from others or searching for an answer to something.  Somewhere in there is the small percentage of my day that makes up what I think of when someone says reading, reading a story or something along those lines (blogs, ebooks, etc).

Almost all of that kind of reading falls into the traditional paper form.  While only a small percentage of my total reading (including basic signpost-reading), it is nevertheless almost 100% dead-tree based.

I have recently begun trying to read ebooks online, and I can't say I enjoy them.  That delivery mechanism doesn't lend itself well to the experience I want when I read small percentage of pleasure reading.  More often than not, I've printed the ebooks out, four pages to a sheet, double-sided, and read them that way.  Even cramming eight pages onto a single 8.5x11 sheet is a more enjoyable way to read for me.  At least for that type of reading.  I don't suffer from the same feelings toward reading news online or searching for answers to questions.  Without knowing just why, I think dead-tree form helps bring draw me more into the story.  Maybe it eliminates the distraction...(IMs, incoming Email, the ability to just click over to something else when a passage gets slow).

For what it's worth, and to summarize that ridiculously long explanation into one phrase, I really think the type of reading makes a difference on the desired delivery mechanism.  Or maybe vice versa.

-Chris

If you read, does it matter where you read?

Uncle Entity

Tue Jul 29 01:57:06 -0700 2008

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It's hard to tell these days with 50 being the new 30 but I'd say I'm not so young.

I have completed my first ever audiobook a couple days ago and think that's where my future lies. Now instead of getting paid to drive around listening to music all day I can 'read'.

Been looking into the robo-voices the last couple of days since there isn't a whole lot that interests me on say Project Gutenberg that I haven't already read in dead tree form but that's looking like it would take a lot of work to markup a book before throwing into the text to speech converter as pronunciation and timing between words seem to be the major problem.

There is an online site where you upload a file and they give you a link to an mp3 that I found but haven't tried out yet. Their demo seemed to suffer from the word timing problem as well. Other than that mostly just playing with festival and reading the manual to get an idea how to markup text and maybe get into the pronunciation dictionary to fix some words for good.

The main problem I've seen with festival is the 'good' voices need to be hand tuned as their current state is 'raw' to provide a baseline for research work. It is somewhat unclear how one goes about doing this from reading the manual so that may be a task that is above my pay grade.

Other than that I want one of those e-ink readers but have resisted so far since I usually just mess around on the interwebs if I'm not working so probably wouldn't ever really use it. If they weren't something like $400 I'd probably just get one to have another gadget lying around but at their current price point I'm perfectly happy to read pdfs on the laptop.

If you read, does it matter where you read?

KlaymenDK

Tue Jul 29 02:37:14 -0700 2008

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Back before my Psion Revo broke, I read lots of books from PG. The Revo was actually a very nice  ebook reader, but it's very hard to come by these days (and I don't recall what software I used with it).

How , where and what you read matters.

Alexander Ibrahim

Tue Jul 29 09:45:49 -0700 2008

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I have noticed the same trend in reading habits- more and more online reading. In my age group (36 at writing) I've noticed a trend in people simply not even attempting to remember what they read beyond their needs for immediate use. Amongst a slightly younger group I've noticed the same trend in regards to memory, but also a tendency to switch topics at random, very similarly to the symptoms of attention deficit disorder.

I don't actually intend to talk much about the ADD-like symptoms of much younger readers, just to say it annoys me and I see no benefit as yet.

Just a bit of reference, I tend to be the oldest of my group. A lot of my closest friends cluster near my age but the majority of my friends are new university graduates and an increasing number are university aged. That said, I think amongst my peers 90% of reading is done electronically, as is 100% of writing. Amongst the avid readers in my group everyone has an eBook reader of some sort. I was the last hold out, but now even I have one by default with iPhone 2.0 software. 

The trend in not attempting to remember seems (very anecdotally and unscientifically) to result from the easy access to information. Wikipedia and Google make it easy to find what you need, and constant connectivity makes them always available. So, why remember, for example, geographical facts? In fact tools like portable GPS systems are taking this phenomenon local. I hate to "blame" my favorite new toy... but with an iPhone 3G I never ever attempt to learn new things about where I live- I only half jokingly "just ask the portable brain."

The issue is that habits are being formed in regards to how we learn and retain information. While using the technology for reference seems ideal, increasingly people around me are taking those habits into their offline reading and elsewhere in their lives. Learning may stop being a lifelong habit, and we may be replacing it with rapid and constant referencing instead.

There is a plus side. I do get to enjoy multiple readings of my favorite fiction more and more. 

Seriously, there is an upside. People with these "reference don't learn" habits seem to have enhanced plasticity for new skills. At first I thought it was just in regards to computer like interfaces, like on a DVR, where you can sort of learn as you go.

Then I noticed how many of my friends when heading out to play paintball are suddenly experts on squad level battle planning and obscure Soviet infantry tactics. A week later they don't know what I'm talking about if I pick up an earlier conversation.

After a while I noticed that this extended into other skills, be it plans for the next white water rafting adventure or a trip to the theater. They "cram" as if for an exam, are experts for a few days... and then it fades away. 

Professionally this trend, thankfully, tends to be ameliorated. Professionals tend to retain core competencies within their fields, but they are able to extend themselves more effectively outside their specialties.

My concern is that this trend of rapid reference and forget makes core analytic skills more essential, and that our schools have never, institutionally, taught the logic or critical evaluation needed for analysis but rather just try to cram vast amounts of material into students for them to faithfully regurgitate.