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In one study, workers switched tasks about every three minutes and took over 23 minutes on average to return to a task. Frequent task switching costs time and interferes with the concentration needed to think deeply about what you read.

After many years of research on how the human brain learns to read, I came to an unsettlingly simple conclusion: We humans were never born to read. We learn to do so by an extraordinarily ingenuous ability to rearrange our “original parts” — like language and vision, both of which have genetic programs that unfold in fairly orderly fashion within any nurturant environment. Reading isn’t like that.

And that, of course, is the problem at hand. No one really knows the ultimate effects of an immersion in a digital medium on the young developing brain. We do know a great deal, however, about the formation of what we know as the expert reading brain that most of us possess to this point in history

Hypertext offers loads of advantages. If while reading online you come across the name “Antaeus” and forget your Greek mythology, a hyperlink will take you directly to an online source where you are reminded that he was the Libyan giant who fought Hercules. And if you’re prone to distraction, you can follow another link to find out his lineage, and on and on. That is the duality of hyperlinks. A hyperlink brings you to information faster but is also more of a distraction.

floor. I once counted my books among my most prized possesions, now I wish I could somehow convert them all to digital files.

My book shelves are full, and books are stacked on the

Textbooks also require big double pages with margins for notes. Writing and reading are communication between writer and reader, the audience and genre (and thus expectations) are important, and the format and technology can be used for bad or good. One is not better than the other, they are different, and the more we know of the needs of writers and readers the better technology will become.

All of the commentators and responses miss a crucial question here: reading for what purpose?

To further complicate this, most of what I read for pleasure is about art or photography, and the kind of history that comes with cool pictures. If paper suddenly disappeared I'd be lost. Most of what I read for work has to be verified, cross referenced, fact-checked, etc. on a tight deadline. If the Internet suddenly disappeared, I'd be more than lost--I'd be paralyzed.

I also completely disagree that the web has killed editing. It has just changed the process to include the reader. It would be more accurate to say that it is killing the sanctity of Editors. 'Bout time, that.

The missing component in E-Reading seems to be the ability to critically grasp and evaluate the material. Learning is transmitted, but it is more linear than holistic. Now in my 70's, I find that reading from a monitor is a distancing experience. There is an intimacy to reading from a traditional book that is missing in the digital format.

important ongoing change to reading itself in today’s online environment is the cheapening of the word.

Hypertext offers loads of advantages.

When you read news, or blogs or fiction, you are reading one document in a networked maze