Do readers of e-books sacrifice a sense of 'place' within a text?
In a world increasingly shaped by digital technology, are there still advantages to reading books the old-fashioned way 鈥� in paper volumes?
Ferris Jabr thinks so.
Jabr鈥檚 article for Scientific American, 鈥淲hy the Brain Prefers Paper,鈥� is included in the聽 recently published 鈥淭he Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014."
Surveying the latest research, Jabr speculates that reading traditional books allows readers to locate a text within a mental geography. 鈥淢uch as we might recall that we passed the red farmhouse near the start of a hiking trail before we started climbing uphill toward the forest,鈥� writes Jabr, 鈥渨e remember that we read about Mr. Darcy rebuffing Elizabeth Bennett at a dance on the bottom left corner of the left-hand page in one of the earlier chapters of Jane Austen鈥檚 鈥楶ride and Prejudice.鈥欌��
This kind of grounding seems more difficult when scrolling a digital text. 鈥淥nce read, those pages vanish,鈥� notes Jabr. 鈥淚nstead of hiking the trail yourself, you watch the trees, rocks and moss pass by in flashes, with no tangible trace of what came before and no easy way to see what lies ahead.... At least a few studies suggest that screens sometimes impair comprehension precisely because they distort people鈥檚 sense of place in a text.鈥�
But Jabr also notes that digital technology allows storytellers to seamlessly blend text with video and sound clips, something not possible in traditional formats.
Meanwhile, according to Jabr, about 20 percent of all books sold in the consumer market are e-books.
That includes, by the way, the electronic version of the anthology where Jabr鈥檚 article on the virtues of paper appears.
Danny Heitman, a columnist for The Advocate newspaper in Louisiana, is the author of 鈥淎 Summer of Birds: John James Audubon at Oakley House.鈥�
