Reading vs. Screening

Dan Bloom, a freelance reporter in Taiwan, coined a new term “screening,” which he submitted and got accepted on Urban Dictionary, the online slang dictionary community, on February 14, 2009.

Screening is defined as: To read text on a computer screen, cellphone screen, Kindle screen or PDA screen or BlackBerry screen; replaces the term “reading” which now only refers to reading print text on paper.

I feel that reading on paper is different from reading digital text online, both in the actual mental experience we have doing both, and in the way we remember and learn things doing both. Both are good. I like reading onpaper, and I like reading online. This is not a us versus them argument over which reading experience is better or more genuine. Both are important ways of getting new information and leaning new ideas. I am on both sides. Screening does not replace reading, nor does reading on paper preclude reading online as an important reading activity. I do both all day long.

I think screens will take over more and more of the information world, and books and newspapers will become dinosaurs over the next 100 years. Is this good? I don’t think so, but one can already see the handwriting on the wall. Books and newspapers and magazines are headed for the garbage heap of history over the next 100 years. Screening will replace reading. But that’s okay. The new generations will adapt and find new ways to be inspired by the information they receive online.

Reading, of course, is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols
printed on a paper surface for the purpose of deriving meaning
(reading comprehension) and/or constructing meaning, according to
scholars. Written information on a printed page is received by the
retina, processed by the primary visual cortex, and interpreted in
Wernicke's area.

But when we "read" online (or "screen", in the new coinage), the
digitalized information is processed in a different way. Reading
online is not the same thing as reading on a paper surface in a book
or magazine or newspaper.

Sharon Schneeberger said: "My definition of reading includes making
meaning of text. That definition if reading remains the same
regardless of the genre or format you are using to access the text."
(http://www.shelfari.com/groups/35096/about)