by Mark Dykeman

Created on: August 31, 2007   Last Updated: November 10, 2009

Some experts say that people are reading less than ever. In one sense that's true, at least for certain forms of writing. However, you might be reading a lot more than you think. There are more and more pieces of writing to read than ever before. However, the medium that we use to read is evolving.

Reading is a task that we've historically associated with printed materials. Novels, textbooks, reference manuals, magazines, newspapers, journals, articles, poems, short stories... all of these great documents were historically printed and distributed on pieces of paper, bound or loose, for centuries. The invention of the printing press rivals the impact of the steam engine on advancing our world and disseminating knowledge to the masses. Both of these inventions are hundreds of years old.

New technologies have had an equally huge impact on our world in a much shorter time. Just think of life without television, radio, and telecommunications: it almost seems impossible to imagine our world without these conveniences. They've become a huge part of modern life and many people spend hours each day using these media. Computers have grabbed a large slice of our available time and energies. To top it all off, the Internet, the medium that allows us to access the information playground that is the World Wide Web, has provided a whole new medium for information exchange. Although printed media still commands significant sales, you can read many of the same materials on-line via the World Wide Web. Books, traditional magazines, and journals are now distributed electronically. Blogs and other information resources (e.g. Wikipedia) are easily accessible, and searchable, on-line. There's plenty of material out there to read on paper and on computer screens. Are we still reading as much as we used to?

Reading habits are typically measured by the number of minutes per day spent reading printed materials. You can also measure these habits by numbers of pages, documents, or books over time as well as the subject matter which is being read. A 2005 Canadian study by the Department of Canadian Heritage, "Reading and Buying Books For Pleasure", compared the results of a similar 1991 study (prior to the massive use of the Internet and the World Wide Web) to more recent research. You might think that the proliferation of video games, new television channels, and on-line games, along with Web surfing, might have had a negative impact on reading. The Internet did have an impact on reading,

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