Reading Reexamined

For anyone interested in literacy who missed this article—there was a piece in The New York Times yesterday about internet literacy (“Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?”).

“Neurological studies show that learning to read changes the brain’s circuitry. Scientists speculate that reading on the Internet may also affect the brain’s hard wiring in a way that is different from book reading.”

Here we encounter again the question of how and to what extent literacy and the written word (something altogether separate from spoken language, a more innate ability) changes the wiring of the brain. Now the question has become whether and how reading on the internet—since it uses different skills than reading in print—affects our brain’s circuitry in a different way. As a child of the web generation, this really hits home for me. Worth a look.

--Amy