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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| danbloom Groupie Antarctica zippy1300.blogspot.c Joined 5749 days ago 42 posts - 42 votes | Message 33 of 52 25 May 2009 at 2:57pm | IP Logged |
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A top techie in SF told me today: "Interesting topic ... given the apparent wave of devices, post-Kindle, that
are seemingly poised to move on from netbooks to allow a full media experience of, well, reading. Or screening. Whatever..." he added: "Do I think that we might need or invent a new word for reading on screens?" and noted: "Unclear to me that this will occur, just as people have been 'dialing' phones on phones with no dials for two decades or more; what would they do instead? Tap? Touch? It is the case that reading on computer screens tends to be more scanning, hopping from place to place, saccadic (sp?) motion skipping along. HOWEVER: reading on nice, reflective screens (eInk, and etc) is much more like the linear, sequential reading process we also use with books, etc. It, thus, occurs to me that the word 'reading' might endure. But the concept of a book, or a chapter? (By analogy: what has happened to nouns like record, album, etc., now that music has become digital - while our verbs remain play and record.)" J. Edited by danbloom on 25 May 2009 at 2:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| danbloom Groupie Antarctica zippy1300.blogspot.c Joined 5749 days ago 42 posts - 42 votes | Message 34 of 52 25 May 2009 at 3:10pm | IP Logged |
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A letter to the editor will appear in the July issue of Technology Review at MIT under the editorship of Jason Pontin. Maybe. Let's see what reactions the letter brings. It will mark the first time the word screening has been used in public prints this way. Stay tuned.
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| danbloom Groupie Antarctica zippy1300.blogspot.c Joined 5749 days ago 42 posts - 42 votes | Message 35 of 52 25 May 2009 at 3:12pm | IP Logged |
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A AF writer says
"I am not sure what to say. I read on a screen almost all day long. I enjoy my newspaper and books as well. but doesn't now seem that reading-on-screen is what people do for several hours, therefore not a controversial thing? the web even is made up of "pages." the new thing is paying for reading on screens-- bravo to amzn for proving that that works." 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| danbloom Groupie Antarctica zippy1300.blogspot.c Joined 5749 days ago 42 posts - 42 votes | Message 36 of 52 25 May 2009 at 3:12pm | IP Logged |
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this MIGHT appear in July issue of Technology Review at MIT
Dear Editor, In recent editor's note in this magazine noted that newspapers and magazines will be around in the future, but perhaps in different forms. I agree. And I also wonder if in the future we might need a new word to differentiate the kind of reading we do online (or on computer or Kindle screens) from the kind of reading we do on paper surfaces. I have heard a few new terms being bandied about on the Internet: screening, browsing, perusing, scanning. Reading is reading, of course. But we might not be "reading" the new newspapers and magazines of the future. We might be "screening" them. Dan Bloom 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 37 of 52 25 May 2009 at 11:51pm | IP Logged |
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In my opinion the kind of reading that is normal on a screen is close to the thing called "skimming" with written sources. If I really have to read long texts attentively then not only the screen itself is a problem, but also the fact that I can't move around, I can't turn the text around like a book and the keyboard is in the way. On the other hand I can quickly look up things in a new window on the screen, and I can find things on the internet in a flash that I could have spend years trying to find in books.
It certainly is another exprerience to read on the screen, but the use of small portable screens with better resolution may bring back the good old days of paper without losing the good new days of Google. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| danbloom Groupie Antarctica zippy1300.blogspot.c Joined 5749 days ago 42 posts - 42 votes | Message 38 of 52 26 May 2009 at 6:27am | IP Logged |
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Iverson, good letter and good points. Yes, some people have also said reading on a screen is like browsing or perusing and skimming, scanning too.......and yes, let's hope that as screens get better and better, the reading experience they afford us will be MORE like reading on paper. But I fear it will never be the same. Therefore my quest for a word to represent this new phenomenon. SCREENING is my choice so far. But I am hoping other words will make the cut too and later, some editor will choose which word it will be. The word might even choose itself! SMILE. we shall see....
Meanwhile, some more mail today from top experts in the field: Jannet Murray tells me: "There is research in this area including some at PARC but I have not followed it so I can't respond. Sorry not to be useful to you. Good luck with your work..." Brewster Kahle is president of Alexa Internet, a company he founded in 1996 and sold to amazon.com. He tells me: "Dan, this word issue is not a focus for me. but good luck, as sometimes these are important." 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| danbloom Groupie Antarctica zippy1300.blogspot.c Joined 5749 days ago 42 posts - 42 votes | Message 39 of 52 28 May 2009 at 8:06am | IP Logged |
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Etymology:
Middle English ''reden'', to explain, hence to read < OE rædan, ''to counsel, interpret''; akin to German ''raten'', to ''counsel, advise'' < IE *rē-dh, *rə-dh < base *ar-, *(a)rē-, to join, fit > art, arm, Latin ''reri'', ''to think'', ratio, a reckoning As you can see here, READING does not mean just reading words on paper. Its origins comes from meanings such as to interpret, to counsel, to think, to reckon, to explain, to advise. ....."to gather up" So it is very plausible to keep READING for reading on paper, and make a new word like SCREENING for the kind of "gathering up" we do on a screen, for the kind of reckoning we do online, for the new kind of thinking we do when we read text on a screen. Many of my critics have said that READING IS READING, on paper or on a screen, as if READING was a holy word that cannot be morphed into a new term like SCREENING for a new appliation, but they are wrong. See? Reading has a deep deep history and it was not always about reading words on a piece of paper. So SCREENING makes even more sense now for what we do online. Yes or no? O.E. rædan (W.Saxon), redan (Anglian) "to explain, read, rule, advise" (related to ræd, red "advice"), from P.Gmc. *raedanan (cf. O.N. raða, O.Fris. reda, Du. raden, O.H.G. ratan, Ger. raten "to advise, counsel, guess"), from PIE base *rei- "to reason, count" (cf. Skt. radh- "to succeed, accomplish," Gk. arithmos "number amount," O.C.S. raditi "to take thought, attend to," O.Ir. im-radim "to deliberate, consider"). Connected to riddle via notion of "interpret." Words from this root in most modern Gmc. languages still mean "counsel, advise." Transference to "understand the meaning of written symbols" is unique to O.E. and (perhaps under Eng. influence) O.N. raða. Most languages use a word rooted in the idea of "gather up" as their word for "read" (cf. Fr. lire, from L. legere). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| danbloom Groupie Antarctica zippy1300.blogspot.c Joined 5749 days ago 42 posts - 42 votes | Message 40 of 52 24 June 2009 at 6:22am | IP Logged |
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Here is the latest news on this spirited discussion:
http://www.boston.com/ae/media/articles/2009/06/19/paper_vs_ computer_screen/ Alex Beam, Boston Globe columnist, June 19 issue, takes up where we left off. Read it and comment. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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