The Evolving Act of Physically Reading In a Digitial World

I have joked with folks that my age cohort is the last of the analogs; the last generation that grew up without ubiquitous internet. My high school years “going online” started as something you had to do in the newfangled computer lab at school. By the time I graduated the townie kids were starting to get dialup at home and AOL was filling up mailboxes with starter discs. No such luck Up Yonder, outside of town, which finally got full blown modern internet that was usable for more than just slowly scrolling Mom’s Facebook on December 29th, 2023.

While the internet, and the then-force multiplier of the internet that was smart phones, have changed much in the last thirty-odd years since folks first started really using the internet, one thing I have really noticed is how digital words have changed how folks read. Not just content, but the physical act of reading. If you take college courses online now, as my kid is doing and I am getting ready to do once again, you usually do not even get books anymore. They are all online. What was once a novel new thing with Kindles and e-readers is now standard for higher education in many places.

The problem is, I have discovered I read differently when reading digitally. I have fiddled and experimented with my reading over the years since I have various kinds of reading to do. I must read a large amount of news and information to do my writing, commentary, and Heard Tell shows, which are obviously all digital. If I am taking classes or doing research, I must read for comprehension, both physical and digital. Reading for pleasure is different still.

What I have found is patterns that are universal to digital vs physical mediums reading regardless of reason. I read much faster digitally, and if reading for comprehension too fast. I read slower and retain more reading physical mediums. With digital, I do tend to focus in with that faster reading and press on to the end. Physically, I do tend to get more distracted for all the usual reasons that are inherent to a book or paper, like having to manipulate it by hand instead of just swiping or clicking.

The result of which has formed noticeable habits. I rarely read for pleasure on digital anymore. I hate having to read for comprehension digitally. Which is a problem in a digital, right-now world. I write everything online but when editing I will often print it out and go old school, pen-and-ink through the work so I slow down and really chew through it.

I am a writer who started out in the digital realm but later made a purposeful move to write for a local print newspaper back home. Writing for print just hits different on a couple of levels. It is just fun holding your work in your own hands. Being a smaller, rural area it is also interesting when the ladies at church bring my mother the cut out and marked up with commentary feedback of my pieces that rubbed them the wrong way. But writing for a newspaper also in subtle ways changes how I write, because for whatever reason knowing someone will physically be holding the words I am writing just does something to my brain in creating them. Which is a good thing, in my humble but accurate opinion, a necessary tether to real people in all too often dehumanizing realm of the interwebs.

While I know reading online will dominate the future, and my writing online will reach far more audience than print does, I cannot help but think about the difference in how I read, and how others might read differently also. The folded newspaper on my father’s desk may be archaic, but there is something there beyond just nostalgia. My youngest youngin and her friends are fairly obsessed with physical media – records, CDs, DVDs, even cassette tapes and VHS – and I cannot help but think for them it is something deeper. A generation that grew up completely digital craves holding things in their hands, possessing it, owning it, and having something old and slow once in a while in their ever-faster, very online world.

So, I am good with old and slow reading, writing, and media, in moderation and in understanding having small outposts of the past is fine and does not stop the time and tides of modern technology. Human nature may be changing and evolving, but not as fast as we think. Nothing wrong with taking our time, from time to time, and making sure we are swimming with the currents of change and not just drowning in them slowly.

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This piece excerpted from the author’s SubStack Sunday post News, Notes, and Notions.