From: "James J. O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2012 15:57:56 -0400
An update from the same Sunday afternoon train, on 4/29/12. I've
reported before to this list.
1. The difficulty in counting grows appreciably worse. I try to
count readers, but the working-on-laptop category where interaction
rather than reading is the business becomes larger and
thumbing-the-smartphone seems to be what everyone now does when not
doing someing else -- shall we call that "reading"? i don't for now.
Watching video is also increasing.
2. Using my own on the fly judgment of what constitutes reading,
then, the total is about 100 and the ratio is almost exactly 2 to1 in
favor of codex or print. That's down from 6 to 1 two years ago and 4
to 1 in December just before the notable boom in sales of readers nd
tablets.
3. Me? Um, codex, scholarly, 18 pages in 2 and a half hours. I've
only looked at my iPad when I really needed to, honest! Spent some
time trying to decide whether to buy (e- or p-?) the touted new book
by the guy at Google about attention and mindfulness, but couldn't
decide.
Jim O'Donnell
On Sunday, December 11, 2011, Jim O'Donnell wrote:
>
> Listreaders may recall that I have before reported on the proportions
> of codex books and "devices" being read on Amtrak trains on the
> northeast corridor of a Sunday afternoon. On 8 June 2010, 44 printed
> volumes outnumber 7 e-readers on an Acela. Today on a Regional, there
> were 117 codices to 32 e-readers. But MANY cautions in thinking about
> that.
>
> 1. "Devices" are ubiquitous. On a train a month ago after dark, we
> lost power for two hours. But looking back the length of the car I
> sat in, *every* seat had a glow in it -- phone, tablet, reader,
> laptop, *something* to absorb the attention as long as the batteries
> survived.
> 2. What I am not controlling for in my count is the basic decision to
> "read" or not. I was struck today that essentially every non-sleeper
> was up to something, and many laptops were open -- I did not count
> them as "reading" unless a look at their screen made it look like
> something other than mail/facebook/browsing. (I did count intention
> as act: if sleeping with book or e-reader in hand, I counted the
> choice.) I was also struck that *many* people were thumbing
> phone-sized devices, and surely some of them were even reading
> extensive texts, but I counted none of them either way.
>
> So what I would want to think more about is whether the choice to
> "read" on the train biases towards codex-users. That is, if I am on a
> train for a couple of hours and bored, what shall I do? Twenty years
> ago, the choices were read or sleep. Then it was read, sleep, or
> type. Now it's read, sleep, type, or divert yourself with video
> (numerous tablets doing that) or facebook or texting or twittering or
> . . . . One hypothesis would be then that devices are leading people
> away from a historic choice of reading; and with device in hand, your
> choice may well be the video rather than the Kindle book it holds.
> And so if the "readers" are people who are defined as resiliently
> reading because reading is what makes them feel alive (that would be
> me), then a bias in favor of the traditional material may represent a
> majority choice in a (dwindling?) minority.
>
> Jim O'Donnell
> Georgetown U.
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