I encountered two posts today that concern “deep” reading and tablets – one negative (Chronicle of Higher Education) and one positive (te@chthought). Just for the record, both articles are observational/opinion pieces and the Chronicle article seemed primarily focused on long form (books) reading in the humanities.
Both papers make some sense – e.g., we are distracted when we can use the same device for reading and for other things, we can follow links to explore a basic idea in greater detail. There are some oversights – not all tablets (basic Kindle reader) are designed to encourage multitasking, cost is an issue educators/students do care about, online reading can result in fairly detailed annotation and highlighting, etc.
I must admit that I seldom purchase a book (since this is the focus of the negative position) in hard copy anymore. However, I purchase many more books than was the case say 15 years ago. I quit reading scientific journals in the paper format because reading online was far more efficient, allowed me access to many more journals than I could own or my library carried in paper form, and allowed more sophisticated note taking and highlighting because of search and storage capabilities.
I am pretty much convinced that ebooks are the format of the future. Technology tools associated with reading (broadly defined) will continue to improve (paper books would seem to have little upside). We may have behavioral flaws that have permeated our reading activities, but the distractions are there unless we seclude ourselves in a setting without access to devices or the Internet. I would hate to think that isolation is the only role for the libraries of the future.
