To the Editor:
Is reading the nutrition information on a bag of potato chips â??readingâ?? What about the box score for a Yankees game or closed captions on a TV program?
People have always been able to read in different media and circumstances. Whatâ??s important is the personâ??s purpose in reading, not the medium itself.
Are you looking for specific information, following a historical narrative or savoring the language in a Jane Austen novel?
Thereâ??s very little reading that can be done in one medium (the Internet) but not in the other (traditional print). The rest is all convenience.
Itâ??s harder on the Internet to stumble on those small interesting stories in the back of a newspaper, but itâ??s easier to find specific facts. Thereâ??s no single answer to which is better, but itâ??s all good.
Mark Seidenberg
Madison, Wis., July 29, 2008
The writer is a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin.