In my last post, I talked about the advantages of the digital book, especially with regard to research. To go along with that, I want to share an article that is a must-read for all students, teachers, scholars, and serious readers. Do not be put off by its title, "Scripture in the Age of Google," if you are not religious. Religion actually has very little to do with the piece. It is concise look at the development of reading technology over the ages, from clay tablets to scrolls to the codex, or modern book, and now to the digital text.
For those who are interested in this topic, I highly recommend The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein and Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf. Bauerlein's book offers a tremendous amount of data that we are just now in a position to collect since the personal computer has been with us long enough to study its effects. Wolf is cognitive neuroscientist at Tufts. Her book begins with a survey of how humans developed the capacity to read, a look at the development of written systems of language, and then moves into a look at some of the digital issues facing us, especially with regard to dyslexia. I have recommend both of these countless times to a wide variety of people.
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