Some Considerations about the Future of Reading

Abstract

Reading seems so natural to us as adults that we tend to forget how long it took us to master that activity. We also tend to believe that reading has always been the same and follows the same pattern independently of the culture, the objectives of the reader, the nature of the text, and the extent to which different mediums allow certain modes of reading and discourage others. As a consequence, in a time of rapid technological change, there is a lot of anxiety in the media about a possible decline in the ability to read. In this paper, I will try to put those claims in perspective and I will make the case that we are engaged in a global shift from immersive to ergative reading.