blogging the stacks
“At BookPeople in Austin, Tex., local authors have been putting bookmarks advertising their own works in books on similar topics. At Macís Backs Paperbacks, a used bookstore in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, employees are dealing with the influx of shopdropped works by local poets and playwrights by putting a price tag on them and leaving them on the shelves. At Powellís Books in Portland, Ore., religious groups have been hitting the magazines in the science section with fliers featuring Christian cartoons, while their adversaries have been moving Bibles from the religion section to the fantasy/science-fiction section.” New York Times, 12.24.07
“Shopdropping” is perhaps another reflexive reading skill looping from screen discussion to print discussion.
power of the paratext
“The information highway has no destination, and the sense of travel it provides is pure illusion. What matters is how the information is arranged, how it is understood, and to what uses it is going to be put. In short, what matters is the book the data’s in.” William Gass, A Defense of the Book
primary, secondary, tertiary
Walter Ong suggested a that a secondary orality (augmented by television) could arise within the context of text literacy. Such layering could also be continued to visualize a secondary text literacy (augmented by personal computer screen) emerged in a context of tertiary orality (augmented by cellular telephone).
A secondary text literacy would also emerge as new skill sets of on-line navigation, selection and discovery are directed back to print assimilation. Such a reflexive interaction could grow, and not diminish, the role of print. Likewise increasing levels of skillful comprehension, as required of quick, compressed and nuanced screen presentation, can also be reflexed to print.
Certainly there is no simple arithmetic that requires increasing screen based learning to be directly linked to diminishing paper based learning. Or is there an arithmetic that requires that increasing formats for oral (aural/visual) communication need to be linked to diminishing formats for text literacy (print). Or will increasing screen readership and diminishing print readership necessarily relate to measures of reading comprehension overall. More likely increasing skill sets for comprehension of conceptual works will layer and accumulate and feature increasing varieties of technological mediation. This has been the norm across media history.
Reports of withering reading skills may be based on a arithmetic which delivers the
wrong answer inverted.