Reading Defined

Sez Ogged:

Lots of people read all the time; they read blogs, they read email, they read text messages, they read in chat rooms, etc. In a lot of ways, text--or doing things with the written word--seems more important now than it was ten or twenty years ago. So the complaint is really that people aren't reading the right things, which just seems like license for someone to complain that his taste isn't universally shared. More charitably, the complaint might be that people aren't learning or thinking about certain important things, but if that's it, I wish folks would spell it out, so we could have a real discussion.

Is reading blogs and e-mail really “reading”? I think it is. Or can be. I think blog posts in particular can easily pass the “learning or thinking” test. If the only reading that counts involves books printed on paper, then I guess I don’t read much anymore. (And where to audio books fit here?) However, if you consider all the time I spend viewing text, I read more now than at any time in my life.