Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

The Mini-Heap entry asks, "what does it mean for the future of reading, learning, and teaching that the average person now reads 100,000 words a day on electronic devices?" But the article itself frames it as "what do we lose?" by reading these words. The article is a discussion of Maryanne Wolf's "Reader, Come Home." Jennifer Howard summarizes, "Wolf offers a persuasive catalog of the cognitive and social good created by deep reading, but does not really acknowledge that the ability to read well has never been universal." I think that reading 100,000 words a day - one third of a novel - is actually pretty good, and the adjustments we make in order to read that much (especially to read in a linked and non-linear fashion) might actually be improvements.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Nov 21, 2024 3:06 p.m.

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