Spheres of Reading

"Knowledge expresses itself as a fusion of pre-existing ideas," Aiden Arnold, a Visiting Research Scholar at the University of California, Davis' Center for Neuroscience observes. "Our own thinking involves permutations of basic elements into fascinating combinations," he continues in a recent essay in which he applies this data to the practice of reading to craft a tiered structure that channels the synthetic nature of our thoughts to facilitate our creative insights. Whatever your present system modus operandi ― if any, "Combinatorial Knowledge and Reading in the Spheres" is worth reading.

Visigoths at Academe's Doors?

"If the scuttlebutt about reading is true, the Visigoths are at the door,"
 warn Drs. David Joliffe and Allison Harl. An array of national surveys
 and studies suggests neither high school nor college students spend
 much time preparing for class, the central activity of which entails
 reading assigned articles, chapters, and books. Similar reviews indicate
 college students spend little or no time reading for pleasure. As major
 players in general education, most of which requires substantial reading,
 English department faculty are increasingly asking themselves:
 What are our students reading and why?

Dead to the World Around Them

When I was as young as the lad to our left, I walked the streets of Olneyville, my nose buried in a book, oblivious to all but the occasional blare of horns waking me from my contemplation. Today, as Wayne Curtis writes in The Smart Set, the eyes of digital zombies are fixed on screens, not paper pages, but the risks of collateral damage remain the same. "From time to time, they will glance up and a brief squall of confusion will cross their faces as they try to reorient themselves. ... They wander into streets and traffic as if no cars or other hazards exist in their parallel universe." The hazards of substituting texting for reading ― or conversation, for that matter ― is a subject for another time.

Word Inflation Drives Devaluation

“If we have a million photos, we tend to value each one less than if we only had ten,” Yale University computer scientist David Galertner opens his reply to Edge's 2013 question: What should we be worried about? “The Internet forces a general devaluation of the written word: a global deflation in the average word's value,” he continues. As each word attracts less time and money from readers, it garners less time and effort from writers. As investment by writers and readers declines, society's ability to communicate decays, delivering what Galertner aptly describes as a “body blow to science, scholarship, the arts—to nearly everything, in fact, that is distinctively human.”  Worry About Internet Drivel

A Page Turner

"Lovers of ink and paper, take heart," the astute cyber critic Nicholas Carr writes in the Wall Street Journal. "Reports of the death of the printed book may be exaggerated." In proof of his premise, he notes that 9 out of 10 regular book readers report reading a printed book during the past year, while 70% did not read a single e-book. "There's something about a crisply printed, tightly bound book that we don't seem eager to let go of," Carr concludes.
Don't Burn Your Books - Print Is Here To Stay