“Probably the biggest change is going to come from the changed definition of what we’re reading. More and more, texts will evolve the way Wikipedia entries evolve; the idea of a finished text, where all the words have been locked down, will start to seem a little less orthodox—something you’d expect from a novel, but not from a magazine article, say. And that open-endedness will likely mean that the reader is capable of participating, adding links, commenting, suggesting new avenues for exploration, fact-checking. So we’ll have to read in an even more focused way, I suspect, knowing that we can have a say in where the text eventually goes. So there you go: ebooks and digital text are keeping us from skimming and forcing us to engage with the text more directly. Who would have thought it?”
- Steven Johnson on the future of reading. (via explore-blog)
- Steven Johnson on the future of reading. (via explore-blog)
thoughts?