# Reading Habits -- Skimming the New Normal?



## Extollager (Aug 28, 2018)

From a selfish point of view, as a retired English teacher it's easy for me to feel that I got out just in time...

Skim reading is the new normal. The effect on society is profound | Maryanne Wolf


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## Victoria Silverwolf (Aug 29, 2018)

Fascinating article.

Two ironies:

1.  The distracting video advertisement that interrupts the text.

2.  The fact that it was very difficult for me _not_ to skim the text, just because I was reading it on the computer.  I don't think I would have done the same thing if I had a printed article.

Two second-hand personal anecdotes:

1.  My better half reports a student in a literature class who, after given an assignment to analyze a text of choice, asked "Can I do a movie?"

2.  From the same source, I found out that it was not uncommon for English majors (!) in a class dealing with novels to admit to each other that they had not read the book.

I briefly looked at a Kindle once.  It seemed like a terrible way to read.  Once in a while I have read something via Project Gutenberg or the Internet Archive when a printed book was not at hand.  (The main example was my reading of the very strange, deeply flawed, yet endlessly fascinating two-volume Lewis Carroll novel _Sylvie and Bruno_ and _Sylvie and Bruno Concluded_.)  In addition to that, I am sometimes assigned to read on-line magazines for my reviews for Tangent, and to look at on-line copies of half-century old magazines for my reviews for Galactic Journey.  Those experiences aren't too bad, because I use a full-sized computer screen, so it's almost like looking at the real thing.  Not quite, however; I still prefer physical books and magazines.

I wonder if this is really the dawn of a new era.  Am I like the bard who has memorized enormous amounts of oral literature, disdaining the way that writing has made things too easy?  I don't know.  I get the feeling that the political arena, if nothing else, has been made much worse due to the electronic age.  It bothers me that a list of events happening at the Chattanooga public library, for example, has nothing at all to do with reading.  The place now has a recording studio and a coffee house.  Their slogan is now "Nothing quiet about it!"  As one who loved the cathedral-like tranquility of libraries, that disturbs me.

A few random thoughts:

Who is reading all those gigantic series of thousand-page popular fiction?  Are they skimming them?

A serendipitous advantage for me:  Used books (reading copies, not collectibles) are cheaper; when I can find a used book store that hasn't shut it doors.

The very fact that I am here proves that, Luddite though I might be -- I now own a simple portable phone, for emergency use only, which I hate -- I do not disdain all use of the computer.  I post on forums, publish my reviews, purchase things on-line that I can't find elsewhere, play chess badly, watch old movies, and so on.  I cannot, however, understand the appeal of tweeting or posting photographs of what I ate for lunch.


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## -K2- (Aug 29, 2018)

Though there is a wealth of information (both good and bad) that does not take a gazillionth of the amount of effort it used to take to research something, available online, and entertainment in the form of text and images, it has resulted in exactly the opposite of what it should have.

Instead of folks appreciating the ease to learn or be entertained without much effort, which you would think would mean a much better educated/informed populace, they have instead thrown their hands up and screamed "too much!"  Coincidentally, as implied often in dystopian or futuristic works of fiction.

Personally, I don't believe we're even seeing a proportional representation of pre-internet days.  As people learned they could get the information/entertainment they wanted easier, instead of taking advantage of that, I believe many, perhaps even most people, instead seemed to decide to want less... They want more 'topics,' but, they want everything in brief.  Why I bet you could simply give many folks just a headline and 2-3 sentence blurb, and they'd be good with that.

In other words, they want more diversity, want more of everything, yet less of each thing.

In the low circles I run in, if I present a novel, heck, it could be a masterpiece, nobody wants to read it simply due to a quick scroll of how much text there is.  Shorten it down to a novella and I'll get a few, a novelette or short story, more readers and again.  Crop it down to a page, 2-3 paragraphs... and it gets read by everyone, and they rave on it.

Oddly asking for more... just so long as it is fed to them in similar sized bits.  The moment you increase the number of words, say 4,000 words vs. 500, the number of readers who will NOT come back increases considerably.

I'll stop there before I begin ranting... and before this gets so long everyone stops reading it 

K2


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## WaylanderToo (Aug 29, 2018)

I wonder if this is one of the reasons (apart from more money and/or poor editing) why we see so many volumes of space opera (volume X, XI... MDLX!)

@K2 weirdly (as I've mentioned before) I'm much the opposite - in the main, I really can't be doing short stories/novellas. I want something I can really get my teeth into so the longer the better.


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## Guillermo Stitch (Aug 29, 2018)

Extollager said:


> From a selfish point of view, as a retired English teacher it's easy for me to feel that I got out just in time...
> 
> Skim reading is the new normal. The effect on society is profound | Maryanne Wolf



I saw this and immediately ordered the book. It hasn't arrived so I haven't got anything interesting to say, but I find this stuff absolutely fascinating.


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## -K2- (Aug 29, 2018)

p.s.: Dang, I must have been tired last night.  I can barely decipher my post above 

K2


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## The Big Peat (Aug 29, 2018)

Well, that's not at all scary.

How do you develop this bi-literate brain? I mean, logically, as an internet and reading addict that grew up both, if anyone has its me and people like me, but I can't say I've noticed...


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## Vertigo (Aug 29, 2018)

I think it's interesting but I'm not convinced it's inevitable upon reading from a digital source. I read ebooks in exactly the same way I read printed books; I effectively read them 'aloud' in my head. That's how I've always read and how I will always want to read. And it's also probably why I'm so critical of editing errors. Skim readers will likely not notice them as they are so often in 'invisible' words. I, on the other hand, stumble over them every time. It's also possibly why I hate books with impossible, or at least difficult, names to pronounce because I do pronounce them in my head.

It also limits the speed I can read at; it's rare that I'll read more than 100 pages in around 4 hours (my typical evening's reading time). I have always been suspicious of anyone who says they can read a whole book in that amount time and take in all the nuances, emotions, descriptions, scenery etc. of the book, and I've met plenty who claim they can. I don't want to get into an argument over that point but I really do wonder if anyone can read at those speeds without skimming.

However I don't think this is a new phenomenon I think it's been around ever since the idea of speed reading became popular in... was it the seventies? Nowadays the nature of information on places like Facebook, Twitter and online news, even forums like this one, positively encourage skim reading and maybe that's more accurately the reason younger folk are getting into the habit of reading in that way.


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## tinkerdan (Aug 29, 2018)

Skimming while reading is ancient. I look at it as an answer to speed reading for those who couldn't master the art of speed reading.

In fact way back in the late 60's early 70's I recall going through the process of identifying both methods.

My personal experience with digital is that I skim less than I used to. However, I'm older and perhaps I'm more patient in my reading.

I still find myself skimming occasionally and what that looks like is when I reach the bottom of a page and suddenly realize that I'm less aware of what I just read--I have to go back and reread-- and this happens less often now than it used to.

I find it more valuable to go back and find the spot where I started this because there is usually a scratch in the record that pushed me out of the groove and caused me to skip across the track until I landed planted in a groove at the end of the page. For me skimming happens when the writer loses me. Or vice versa--depending on a person's outlook.

Deliberate skimming is only valuable on such things as technical manuals--as in when the equipment first arrives and you want to scan through and get a rough idea where help may be when you start having questions about what the equipment really can do.

Skimming fiction is just a persons way of saying--I didn't really want to buy this book because I don't have time to read it.

One thought that did come to me though is; perhaps these terrible books with all the 5 star reviews that make no sense are just examples of what happens when people skim fiction.

On another note: I recently experience a phenomenon related to speed reading that I'd rather see them spend time researching. When I speed read, I occasionally have to reread a sentence that makes no sense and often it continues to make no sense until I put a highlight dot somewhere on the sentence to slow me down; at that point I can determine one of two things. I read it correctly and it doesn't make sense or I kept inserting the wrong word in the same place until I established a focus that managed to interrupt whatever evil was going on in my head.

I have to wonder what other words I've changed mentally in my reading and just what pattern there might be and how a writer might avoid using words that might be misinterpreted by the readers mind.


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## The Big Peat (Aug 29, 2018)

tinkerdan said:


> Skimming fiction is just a persons way of saying--I didn't really want to buy this book because I don't have time to read it.



That's funny, because I often skim read parts of books and I'm pretty sure that's not what I meant by it.


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## Cathbad (Aug 29, 2018)

I only skim my non-fiction reads.  I enjoy fiction too much to do that.


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## Guillermo Stitch (Aug 29, 2018)

Vertigo said:


> I think it's interesting but I'm not convinced it's inevitable upon reading from a digital source. I read ebooks in exactly the same way I read printed books; I effectively read them 'aloud' in my head. That's how I've always read and how I will always want to read. And it's also probably why I'm so critical of editing errors. Skim readers will likely not notice them as they are so often in 'invisible' words. I, on the other hand, stumble over them every time. It's also possibly why I hate books with impossible, or at least difficult, names to pronounce because I do pronounce them in my head.
> 
> It also limits the speed I can read at; it's rare that I'll read more than 100 pages in around 4 hours (my typical evening's reading time). I have always been suspicious of anyone who says they can read a whole book in that amount time and take in all the nuances, emotions, descriptions, scenery etc. of the book, and I've met plenty who claim they can. I don't want to get into an argument over that point but I really do wonder if anyone can read at those speeds without skimming.
> 
> However I don't think this is a new phenomenon I think it's been around ever since the idea of speed reading became popular in... was it the seventies? Nowadays the nature of information on places like Facebook, Twitter and online news, even forums like this one, positively encourage skim reading and maybe that's more accurately the reason younger folk are getting into the habit of reading in that way.




At first glance anyway, and before I've read the book, I think I agree with this. I was surprised to see ebooks included as one of the digital sources which may be having these effects. To my mind, it's much more about social media sites, from Facebook to Youtube, providing environments which actively encourage distraction. After all, the more distraction, the more clicks. The more clicks, the more opportunity for someone, somewhere, to make money.

But with ebooks  I don't experience any more distraction than I do with print. It's a straighforward, linear experience for me.


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## Vertigo (Aug 29, 2018)

Guillermo Stitch said:


> At first glance anyway, and before I've read the book, I think I agree with this. I was surprised to see ebooks included as one of the digital sources which may be having these effects. To my mind, it's much more about social media sites, from Facebook to Youtube, providing environments which actively encourage distraction. After all, the more distraction, the more clicks. The more clicks, the more opportunity for someone, somewhere, to make money.
> 
> But with ebooks  I don't experience any more distraction than I do with print. It's a straighforward, linear experience for me.


Yup I agree completely and I too was surprised. I wonder if it isn't just the case that, due to social media habits, people (and I'd say here mostly younger people) have got in the habit of skimming anything on a digital screen and so continue that habit with an ereader as it is a digital screen. Maybe with paper being a less common medium for them they are inclined to, possibly unconsciously, treat it with more respect. Not sure if that's quite the right word; maybe treat it more seriously is more correct.


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## psikeyhackr (Aug 29, 2018)

I confess to being suspicious of these analyses but admit that digital life has amplified an existing problem.

How do we separate the wheat from the chaff?  Theodore Sturgeon said that 90% of everything is crud, but digital life has amplified the info flow by at least 1000% and it seems like 99.9% of it is crud.

But everyone has their own definition of crud.  For me *Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy* is crud but I do not doubt that there are plenty of SF fans eager to lynch me for that.  That is part of why I wrote my SF/Fantasy Density program.

How is a 5 year old supposed to figure our what is and is not CRUD?

*A neuroscientist explains what tech does to the reading brain*
A neuroscientist explains what tech does to the reading brain

To me reading a book in the Kindle app is different from skimming articles.


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## The Big Peat (Aug 29, 2018)

Vertigo said:


> Yup I agree completely and I too was surprised. I wonder if it isn't just the case that, due to social media habits, people (and I'd say here mostly younger people) have got in the habit of skimming anything on a digital screen and so continue that habit with an ereader as it is a digital screen. Maybe with paper being a less common medium for them they are inclined to, possibly unconsciously, treat it with more respect. Not sure if that's quite the right word; maybe treat it more seriously is more correct.



Kindle pages are tiny and give the illusion of being able to take in everything at once. I'd love to see a study on how long readers spent on each kindle page depending on their age.


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## Vertigo (Aug 29, 2018)

The Big Peat said:


> Kindle pages are tiny and give the illusion of being able to take in everything at once. I'd love to see a study on how long readers spent on each kindle page depending on their age.


No more tiny than a typical paperback. Well maybe a little smaller, but not significantly smaller.


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## The Big Peat (Aug 29, 2018)

Vertigo said:


> No more tiny than a typical paperback. Well maybe a little smaller, but not significantly smaller.



Maybe I've got an unusually small kindle but I'd say the difference is significant to me at least.

edit: We're talking more four or so lines, and a bit less width here.


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## Vertigo (Aug 29, 2018)

The Big Peat said:


> Maybe I've got an unusually small kindle but I'd say the difference is significant to me at least.
> 
> edit: We're talking more four or so lines, and a bit less width here.


I think we're probably down to splitting hairs here. I guess it's a perception thing.


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## The Big Peat (Aug 29, 2018)

Vertigo said:


> I think we're probably down to splitting hairs here. I guess it's a perception thing.



True, but perception is probably part of why words viewed in one way and not another leads to different brain circuitry.


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## Guillermo Stitch (Aug 29, 2018)

Guillermo Stitch said:


> At first glance anyway, and before I've read the book, I think I agree with this. I was surprised to see ebooks included as one of the digital sources which may be having these effects. To my mind, it's much more about social media sites, from Facebook to Youtube, providing environments which actively encourage distraction. After all, the more distraction, the more clicks. The more clicks, the more opportunity for someone, somewhere, to make money.
> 
> But with ebooks  don't ecperience any more distraction than I do with print. It's a straighforward, linear experience for me.





The Big Peat said:


> Kindle pages are tiny and give the illusion of being able to take in everything at once. I'd love to see a study on how long readers spent on each kindle page depending on their age.



But you can set the font size, which I do, and come reasonably close to a printed page.


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## Parson (Aug 29, 2018)

Count me among those who find these conclusions dubious, especially as it relates to ebooks read on a kindle. I read both the absolute same way. In fact I am now on my fourth Kindle, not counting phone and computer apps. But I agree that there is more (how much more, unsure) skimming mostly because of social media. Social media mostly reminds me of talk shows:  *A whole lot of people pooling their ignorance.*  Give me someone who has studied the situation in a discussion with someone else who has also studied and I will learn many times as much. --- When there is mostly garbage, who doesn't skim?


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## psikeyhackr (Aug 29, 2018)

Actually I started an SF story about this subject but a conclusion never came into focus:

The iTod Singularity - Wattpad


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## dwndrgn (Aug 29, 2018)

This article is not convincing me of anything. To begin with, I'm not convinced that 
"As UCLA psychologist Patricia Greenfield writes, the result is that less attention and time will be allocated to slower, time-demanding deep reading processes, like inference, critical analysis and empathy, all of which are indispensable to learning at any age. "
empathy is a time-demanding deep reading process. I can see how someone who skims a text would be less able to complete a critical analysis but I'm not sure where empathy comes into it.

Additionally, the research that was mentioned later where two groups of students were both given the same story to read, one in digital form and one in paper form, seems flawed as well. Stories affect people differently and the best way to complete a study like that one is to have TWO different stories read by the same two groups but switched, in other words, one group reads one story in digital and the other story in paper and see where your information leads. I really dislike the way people tend to extrapolate from minimal information.

And then the article goes on to say that 
"In other words, we don’t have time to grasp complexity, to understand another’s feelings, to perceive beauty, and to create thoughts of the reader’s own." Which just seems specious to me. People can see beauty in a second - they don't need loads of time to know something is beautiful. Sure, you can appreciate the details of that beauty after some time studying it, but you know it is beautiful the instant you see (or hear/feel...) it. 

This quote seems to be from someone who has never used an ereader which all have ways to go back and forth to find something - even a word search if you can't find what you are looking for. 
"Karin Littau and Andrew Piper have noted another dimension: physicality. Piper, Littau and Anne Mangen’s group emphasize that the sense of touch in print reading adds an important redundancy to information – a kind of “geometry” to words, and a spatial “thereness” for text. As Piper notes, human beings need a knowledge of where they are in time and space that allows them to return to things and learn from re-examination – what he calls the “technology of recurrence”. The importance of recurrence for both young and older readers involves the ability to go back, to check and evaluate one’s understanding of a text. The question, then, is what happens to comprehension when our youth skim on a screen whose lack of spatial thereness discourages “looking back.” "

I think the article is conflating reading things on the internet with reading actual books. I can mostly agree with what they are saying (maybe not the empathy or beauty bits) if they are only discussing how people read news and other SM stuff online. But if they are saying that John Doe buys X book and then instead of reading it, skims it. I don't think they have a case. However, I do know that people don't take the time to read past the headlines or follow through to see if what they are reading is actually true (consider Facebook memes - the ones that aren't about cats are pretty much full of misleading information but they get passed around like they are proven facts).

I never skim. What would be the point? Back in high school, when reading certain books was part of the curriculum and I didn't want to read them I just didn't read them. I didn't skim then either. Seems pointless to me. I dunno. All their talk of empathy and beauty got me cornfuzzled.


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## AlexH (Aug 29, 2018)

Vertigo said:


> I think it's interesting but I'm not convinced it's inevitable upon reading from a digital source. I read ebooks in exactly the same way I read printed books; I effectively read them 'aloud' in my head. That's how I've always read and how I will always want to read. And it's also probably why I'm so critical of editing errors. Skim readers will likely not notice them as they are so often in 'invisible' words. I, on the other hand, stumble over them every time. It's also possibly why I hate books with impossible, or at least difficult, names to pronounce because I do pronounce them in my head.
> 
> It also limits the speed I can read at; it's rare that I'll read more than 100 pages in around 4 hours (my typical evening's reading time). I have always been suspicious of anyone who says they can read a whole book in that amount time and take in all the nuances, emotions, descriptions, scenery etc. of the book, and I've met plenty who claim they can. I don't want to get into an argument over that point but I really do wonder if anyone can read at those speeds without skimming.
> 
> However I don't think this is a new phenomenon I think it's been around ever since the idea of speed reading became popular in... was it the seventies? Nowadays the nature of information on places like Facebook, Twitter and online news, even forums like this one, positively encourage skim reading and maybe that's more accurately the reason younger folk are getting into the habit of reading in that way.


I've wondered why I seem to spot more typos and other errors than most people I know. Maybe it's because I'm a much slower reader than them! I also dislike names or words I can't pronounce. They don't stick in my head and I trip over them more than the first time.


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## Anthoney (Aug 29, 2018)

Victoria Silverwolf said:


> Who is reading all those gigantic series of thousand-page popular fiction? Are they skimming them?



I read gigantic series because I like to immerse myself for days or weeks at a time.  Skimming would be counter productive to the experience I'm seeking.  Then again I could never understand people who used cliff-notes instead of reading the book.


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## Vertigo (Aug 29, 2018)

AlexH said:


> I've wondered why I seem to spot more typos and other errors than most people I know. Maybe it's because I'm a much slower reader than them! I also dislike names or words I can't pronounce. They don't stick in my head and I trip over them more than the first time.





Anthoney said:


> I read gigantic series because I like to immerse myself for days or weeks at a time.  Skimming would be counter productive to the experience I'm seeking.  Then again I could never understand people who used cliff-notes instead of reading the book.


I could have written both of those posts myself!!  With the addition that I love long, Peter Hamilton style, books for exactly that reason! Although I admittedly like to read series spread out over a long period of time (multiple years typically) with many series and other novels in between each instalment.


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## psikeyhackr (Aug 29, 2018)

Victoria Silverwolf said:


> Who is reading all those gigantic series of thousand-page popular fiction?  Are they skimming them?



I have read all of the Vorkosigan series and most of the Honor Harrington series and lots Keith Laumer's Bolo stuff and his imitators.

Sometimes I skimmed David Weber's politico-economic tirades.

I'm sorry!


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## Robert Zwilling (Aug 29, 2018)

I skim when using my kindle. It shows me 1 or 2 paragraphs which I can preread at a glance. If it is a story composed of multiple stories (and I write like that) and I am looking at one of the stories I am not following, I skip it. You press your thumb down on the screen and there is the next bite size chunk of text to preread, repeat as needed. If I am following the real plot of the defunct engineer racing against time to defuse the crisis I don't need to know what his family life was like 10 years ago.

Sometimes people alternate the present time story with an historical accounting of the traditional fashions that created that way of life. If I'm not interested in the historical traditions I skip it. If the battle gets too bloody or too long and drawn out I skip it. Because you can clearly see what you are skipping you are not wasting your time reading the story, you are reading what is important to you about the story. I'm sorry if all the research the author did is unread. I'm not going to read it just because it is there.

I read books and screens but not much in the line of magazines anymore. No online magazines though I would like to find some nice science fiction magazines on line. That's the trouble, one can't buy used magazines anymore. I prefer real books but I look through the web for the best deal on used books (how ironic I'd like to be an author for a living). The charity places that sell a book for penny and $4 shipping are great unless you are trying to sell your used books. The E-book reader is fantastic for Indie works because a lot of the time there is only an ebook to get. I published only E-Books at first, was told that was the green way to do things. I didn't try to make a paperback cause I thought it was too hard to do. I get the free stuff knowing I probably won't get the rest of the set, unless it comes along at a reduced offer. Which does happen. I'm not paying over $3 for an E-book, just don't have money. In earlier times when money was made to spend I would buy 2 or 3 books at a time at bookstores that sadly no longer exist. I had no idea Star Trek books were so vastly produced until Barnes and Noble arrived and there was a whole long shelf of nothing but Star Trek books. 

I read the web like it is a newspaper, sometimes skim, but not if I am interested in the article and especially if I am clueless. It is the best place to get all the viewpoints on any one thing. I had to get the paperless local paper, one fourth the cost. Even looking at each page on the big screen monitor I know I miss stuff that I never would with the real paper paper. Some kind of phenomena about reading off a computer screen. I call it horizontal blindness, where your eyes skip right over a word, a phrase, even an entire line. Like it was never there.

Does the way you read affect the brain? Of course it does. A couple of years ago I was told no eye glass prescription was going to make it any easier for me to read. After 20 years of working screens, starting out with the George Jetson green consoles with the green screens with the green text graduating up to the entire desktop filled with huge to little screens, my eyes kept narrowing the focus point which was approaching my nose. Once I got out of there and started reading all different size fonts from books I can't change to text on screens with nasty backgrounds to when I write and crank the magnification up to the moon I have found that my ease and ability to read has greatly improved. I'm guessing by forcing the eyes to focus under all sorts of conditions I broke the stagnation of the eyeballs, allowing them to freely orgasm while absorbing text, instead of using the clockwork orange technique of eye muscles rigidly frozen in place. That's only a physical change.

The readers are multi-purposed, and for many people they only have one use. The pesky phones are hand held communicators with builtin computers. Because they don't (but could easily) come with a mouse, keyboard, screen, and printer, the only ones really using it as a computer are the companies feeding the phone as they monitor everything everyone does on the phone. I have no idea how people read on them but they do. There's my line in the sand. They watch TV on them as well. It all looks like a slinky toy expanding and contracting (which in itself is something to watch) from little screen phones that kept upsizing to tablet size than back down again to the tablets approaching the console screen sizes of the 1970's then back down again to the huge screens that fill a wall, and show no sign of receding. Someday the computerized phone will be harnessed by the user, but it might be implanted in one's neck by then, builtin tags like the implants our pets have.


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## -K2- (Aug 30, 2018)

@Robert Zwilling ; You and others mention folks reading on their I-phones (which makes no sense to me sitting 2-feet from a 40" monitor), which reminds me of just a couple days ago.  To make a long story short, after a number of conversations regarding a 211,000 word novel of mine, I was at a loss why it was taking this guy so long.  More so, he kept nudging me to get it into print ASAP.

Turns out, he's been reading it on his I-phone.  Personally, I'd not even try that.  However, a surprising number of folks I've learned have ditched their PC's, notebooks, tablets and so on, and are doing exactly that.

K2


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## psikeyhackr (Aug 30, 2018)

-K2- said:


> @Robert Zwilling ; You and others mention folks reading on their I-phones (which makes no sense to me sitting 2-feet from a 40" monitor)



Yeah, iPhones are ridiculous!  I use the Kindle app on my Samsung Note 5 Android phone.  I can lie on my back on the couch, or stomach on my bed with my head on the pillow.  It is better than a book in some ways since I don't have to hold it open or worry about bending pages.  I do like keeping books in good shape when I get them.


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