Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
James T. KeaneSeptember 18, 2008

This essay from the Chronicle of Higher Education by Mark Bauerlein is more evidence for what I already suspected: reading on a computer screen makes me stupid.  Or, more exactly, trying to read dense, extended arguments on a computer screen results in an entirely different kind of comprehension from reading a book or a newspaper.  Among Bauerlein’s conclusions is the following disturbing tidbit:

"That’s the drift of screen reading.  Yes, it’s a kind of literacy, but it breaks down in the face of a dense argument, a Modernist poem, a long political tract, and other texts that require steady focus and linear attention — in a word, slow reading. Fast scanning doesn’t foster flexible minds that can adapt to all kinds of texts, and it doesn’t translate into academic reading."

So before you buy that Kindle from Amazon...

Jim Keane, SJ

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
16 years 10 months ago
Of course not. The America blog is a special blend of wit, erudition, and gamma rays that prevents any such thing!
16 years 10 months ago
But this doesn't include the America magazine blog, right? :)
16 years 10 months ago
Actually, the primary function of the Kindle is for reading whole books, page after page of text as dense and Modernist as you want it to be. (The Kindle has a simple Web browsing function but it is not a good primary or even secondary surfing device.) So it does not fit neatly into this particular literacy discussion.

The latest from america

Frank Turnbull, S.J., a longtime editor at 'America' who died earlier this week, is remembered as a humble, quiet and yet forceful presence to those who knew him during his 85 years of life.
James T. KeaneJuly 18, 2025
A Reflection for Saturday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time, by Zac Davis
Zac DavisJuly 18, 2025
Trauma-informed spirituality knows better than to promise that prayer will take away all the pain. But it can offer the hope that, even in the midst of pain, there can be moments of feeling whole.
Nicole KirpalaniJuly 18, 2025
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telephoned Pope Leo XIV, who urged Israel’s leader to revive negotiations and enact a ceasefire.