Journalist Dan Bloom – who writes for TechEye from the beautiful island of Taiwan, has written a piece which has provoked a great deal of comment and controversy.
Following reports that spell the end of print in favour of digital images shown on tablets and the like, Bloom asks a good question that as far as we’re aware hasn’t been answered by researchers.
He says: "WHAT IF, what if reading off screens -- what Marvin Minksy at MIT calls "screen-reading" and what I call "screening" -- is vastly inferior, in terms of brain chemistry and neuroscience, to reading text on paper surfaces? WHAT IF, what if reading on paper surfaces is real reading and reading off screens is faux-reading? WHAT IF, what if reading on paper surfaces -- a book, a newspaper, a magazine -- is vastly superior to "screening" off screens -- computers, iPhones, iPads, BlackBerrys, nooks, Crannies, you name it! -- in terms of information processing, information retention, information analysis and, perhaps most importantly, Ross, critical thinking skills?”
He suggests that in the future it’s possible that scientists will discover that reading digitally has an effect on the brain, and could show that “we have been barking up the wrong tree with this gadgethead fixation”.
You can read Bloom’s open letter here, and see what Roy Greenslade from the Grauniad has to say, here.
"Dan, we have no idea where technology will take us in the next ten or twenty years, but when we look backwards and see where technology has taken us, it is likely that the Internet will croak newsprint in the next decade(s)."
Professor Sol in 75 years young. Funny, how when I was 20 and he was 35, i felt he was OLD.....and he was just 35,,,,and now that I know he is 75 to my 61, it is ME who feels OLD....he's gonna live to 100. Me? lucky to make it to Ringo's 64......
Exactly what recognizes an image as abstract information that conveys data in a recognized pattern? Habitual use of an electronic screen and evolution to more ergonomic gadgets and practices will resolve such psychological blocks.
@TL: Précised re "Exactly what recognizes an image as abstract information that conveys data in a recognized pattern? Habitual use of an electronic screen and evolution to more ergonomic gadgets and practices will resolve such psychological blocks."
Good point and thanks for adding to the discussion here. My point in all this, though, is not the psychological blocks some people have shown with reading off screens. I am not talking about psychology or the good smell of newsprint or the materiality of turning the physical pages, we can all get used to that! I am talking about the neuroscience issues here: does reading off screens light up different regions of the brain, compared to when we red on paper surfaces?
That is the only question I am interested in. My hunch is that diff regions of the brains do light up when tests are done on people reading on paper or off screens inside an MRI or PET scan machine. But just a hunch,, and I might be wrong.
But what if I am right? Ask Anne Mangen in Norway about this, she knows far more than I do. Or ask Maryanne Wolf at Tufts in Boston or Gary Small at UCLA and there must be some experts in the UK and in German and France who want to know this too.
It will cost money and time, maybe 15 more years. But an answer will come. Let me be wrong! I want to be wrong!
Meanwhile, i hear that the New York Times is preparing a major front page story on this very issue, of paper reading vs screen reading, and again, NOT focusing on convenience or psychology., but on the very questions I am posing here. Stay tuned. Your eyes will not believe what you read when you read it, IF you read it. The reporter told me she is working on the story now, interviewing top experts in the field. But you know, reporters, they don't always follow through with their promises. They got other stories to write on deadline, too. I understand..
Possibly fast moving visuals, or just noticed differences in the environment activate the part that deals with environmental awareness, which means we try make an instinctual threat assessment. It then switches to deciphering more abstract visuals.
My view (in brief) is that these issues will be transcended in the next generation of digital paper.
Thanks for note, Ross. I see now, SPAM held me up, and once you got it, you posted my open lettre to you, so above, where i commented ....." what's also worth noting is that Ross Dawson has refuses to post my comments on his blog, and I know he received them because i posted them there, but for some reason he does not want to honor freedom of speech. No idea why. He does seem like a good and honest bloke, but maybe not when it comes to ideas that run counter to his. I don't know. .."
I WAS WRONG, my bad, egg on my face, eating crow here in Taiwan today, and I apologize. I see you posted my comments and thanks. It was just a metter of the SPAM police holding me up for a spamming ticket. O internet life!
Again, my apologies, and i take back what i said. i like you and i like your blog. rock on, sir. see you again in 2017! maybe by then the MRI and PET scan studies will be published, for better or ....worse!
sigh
smile
cheeers,
Danny
You asked my POV on this...
Yeah, Mr Dawson can be a bit dramatic at times, but I think he’s right in that newspapers are going to take a body blow from the exponential rise of the Web as a mainstream medium, especially in the age of popular e-readers like the iPad.
I think you’re completely right: paper wins hands down over screen reading in terms of brain chemistry, neuroscience, information processing, critical thinking etc – not to mention the fact that I *prefer* to read paper.
Despite all that, however, I think reading paper will still decline in favour of screening as everything becomes more and more electronic and “mobile”.
I don’t like it, but I think it’s inevitable.
So yes, IMHO, you are right and so is Mr D!
Cheers,