Links: From Scroll to Screen

Though many articles have been published in recent years about the transition from paper books to increased e-reading, this one in the New York times is one of the most interesting I've read.  In it, Lev Grossman writes about the major transitions in the technology of reading:  the development of the codex, and the development of e-reading platforms.  The way in which the form of the book influences reading is a major theme in his article:  the codex allows for a certain type of reading- moving from section to section in a single work- that is more difficult with digital documents (not to mention, with a scroll).  He writes,
"But so far the great e-book debate has barely touched on the most important feature that the codex introduced: the nonlinear reading that so impressed St. Augustine. If the fable of the scroll and codex has a moral, this is it. We usually associate digital technology with nonlinearity, the forking paths that Web surfers beat through the Internet’s underbrush as they click from link to link. But e-books and nonlinearity don’t turn out to be very compatible. Trying to jump from place to place in a long document like a novel is painfully awkward on an e-reader, like trying to play the piano with numb fingers. You either creep through the book incrementally, page by page, or leap wildly from point to point and search term to search term. It’s no wonder that the rise of e-reading has revived two words for classical-era reading technologies: scroll and tablet. That’s the kind of reading you do in an e-book."

Read the rest of the article from the New York Times here.