Cedar Behnke
Lisa Martin (please give me a A+)
English 111-(green)
21 April 2016
Technology and How It Helps People Read Better
Most people use or have used technology, and even many of them using tech daily, hourly, or more often. Even with the large amount of people who use technology, they don’t commonly think about if or how technology is affecting us, but recently, the effects of technology on reading have come up and been debated if they are either mostly positive or negative. A comprehensive view of what technology does to our reading retention, access to information, speed of reading, new and struggling readers, perception of good work, lateral reading, and a person’s relationship with reading is important to come up with a solid conclusion. Why does knowing the effects matter? They are important for humanity, if they are negative people need to know how to prevent them; and if positive, then how to use them more for humanity’s benefit. While National Endowment for the Arts argues that people are reading full works less in their free time, and Nicholas Carr argues that the internet is making people lose the ability to read long articles, the effects of technology on reading are mostly positive because the ease of reading laterally is more accessible, helps struggling readers to learn, and promotes people to read more on the internet.
To begin, Mathew Kirschenbaum argues “that reading is being both reimagined and re-engineered” (para 2). In his article “Reading is Changing” he critic’s points of a NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) research report. One of the points he argues against is that reading is only useful if it is comprehensive. He explains that well known people in the past were depicted with many books about them. If reading one book at a time is the correct way, then why is reading laterally (reading many sources at once) shown to be the best way to learn in many painting of educated people in the past. Kirschenbaum then states that reading laterally is now commonplace, and not just for the well-educated. When a student today researches, he or she rarely reads a full article, but instead reads parts of many articles. He suggests some of the many benefits of reading pieces of a wide variety articles is the available possibility that the researching student will find the many sides to a topic to overview.
Supporting Kirschenbaum, Ursula Le Guin questions in her article “The Death of the Book” people are really reading less, because there is very little that can be done on the internet without reading. She states that even the broken down text speech found requires a knowledge of reading and writing. She writes, “Texting may have replaced all other forms of verbality for some people, but texting is just a primitive form of writing: you can’t do it unless you no u frm i, lol [sic]” (para 13). Guin recalls that most communication used to be talking to each other on the phone or face to face, but now to talk to someone people text, email, and read. This newfound usefulness of reading and writing helps give incentive to read and write for people. She then explains that “people who read books mostly want to share them, and feel however obscurely that sharing them is important, they’ll see to it that, however and wherever, the books are there for the next generation” (Pp 5). Some people will enjoy reading books enough that they will want share with others the joy of reading longer works. Books will not die; books will change though. Reading has never been as useful, therefore, this effect created by technology is positive.
Then, Mathew Ingram explains in his essay “Are we living in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451?” that, because of technology, the important tools required to write are now more accessible for everyone. He reminds people that most of work that is being created is made by individuals, and not large corporations and governments. Since there are many more people who write alone the majority of content will be created by individuals. Nearly everyone has written something on the internet, which in turn creates a mass of different writings. Ingram explains that much of that text will be false, poorly written, and useless, but people will learn to find the correct, good, and high quality writing. In a study, there was shown to be a higher retention and comprehension level among children in the fifth grade when they read with screens compared to books. (AYDEMİR, (İLERİ), ÖZTÜRK, and Horzum 2272-275) People learn to find the important content and ignore the unneeded. This technique helps people speed up the process of researching true content. Thus, technology has positively affected people to read more correct content efficiently.
In a different area, technology is helping people to read faster. In Lindsay Oishi’s article "Word by Word: RSVP Technology Can Transform the Reading Experience", she talks about how Rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) technology improve the ease of reading for people struggling with reading. RSVP reading technology displays the text that is to be read one word at a time at a set pace. That continuous speed lowers the amount of distractions and input from the user required which in turn helps users with disabilities, physical or mental, to read. Reading usually done by mentally pronouncing the words when reading to oneself (subvocalization). When using RSVP, the words are played back at a very fast speed so they can’t be subvocalized, thus, RSVP helps people overcome their subvocalization habit. Although comprehension lowers when the reading rate reaches the quickest speed, the tool of RSVP technology can be a powerful learning tool for many. Because of the benefits of easier reading for struggling readers and faster reading speeds for experienced readers, RSVP technology is a positive effect created by technology. Technology has effects on reading even for young children in school. Mary Taylor compiles the differences between reading a book and reading on a computer for children in her article “Digital Reading: A Look at a Second Grade Class”. She explains that in her survey of children in a second grade class shows that computers and eBooks creates a feeling of excitement, fun and the freedom to learn what the children want. The children used words as “interesting” and “involving” to describe the computer. As for books, the kids said that they used books for “enjoyment, gathering information, and their own learning”. Taylor expounds that the main difference found from this information is that computers are preferred for interactive research, and that books are only used to read and are better in portability because of their small size. She states that the kinds of tools available in eBooks benefits both struggling readers and advanced readers. The tools she is talking about is the easy to use dictionary, text to speech, ever increasing amounts of data available and adjustable text sizes. She explaines that the some of the children enjoyed playing using audio of the text they were reading well they were reading at the same time. She concludes that the preference depends on the child. Based on the several tools available such as easy to access dictionary and adjustable text size which help new readers to read, this effect is positive.
Again on the subject of reading in schools, Rebecca Mead reviews in her paper “Learn Different” a new schooling system that uses mainly computers to teach in a “micro-school” with thirty-five to fifty students (para 2). She explains the freedom the students have to learn what they want through the internet. So if a student wanted to learn about castles, they can. Mead then states that the best way to read and learn with technology is not set yet (but even today it has many benefits), for example, when they were working on better software for the teachers to use to track the progression of the students, most of the programmers were men. When they created the program, they made it so a tap on the phone through clothing would display that something notable happened for the teacher to mark later. What they didn’t take into account is that women store their phone in many different places. They stopped, and learned from that experience to do something better. Mead explains that, “They had failed fast and failed forward” (para 69). This statement means that failing was not a long process and when they failed, they learned from it. In technology people need to try many things in order to find the best way to teach reading and to read their self. Technology is changing how people read, and it has not stopped changing yet what may be how people read online now will most likely change many times and soon. Thus, if people use technology to read and learn, it will then help them to explore more subjects. Therefore, this effect on reading is positive.
On the harmful effects side, the previously talked about National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) reports through evidence shown in several studies that young Americans are reading less and less well than previous generations. , the survey only counted reading done in a person’s free time that was thorough of the whole text as real reading. Any other reading done was not counted. For example, required reading completed for school was not counted as true reading. What actually is to be learned from those studies by NEA is that the younger generation is reading comprehensively less in their free time. The ability to read expansively is a very important skill in order to gain precise information; therefore, this effect is negative (Iyengar, Sullivan, Nichols, Bradshaw, Rogowski, and Bauerlein 7-20).
Threateningly, Technology also increases the chance of humanity as a whole to become anti-intellectual. In Ray Bradbury’s book Fahrenheit 451 he tells a story about a future where the government destroys books. In his book, he show the distractions that are being created by technology. Some include, television, games, videos, and movies. In his book, mostly everyone is obsessed with books. Mathew Ingram writes in an article about Bradbury’s book adding that there are even more “distractions found on sites like Buzzfeed and the hours people waste on Facebook games like Farmville” (Ingram para 11). Therefore, if people falter and get sidetracked easily by the distractions created by technology, then good fulfilling content will not be read as much, thus creating a negative effect on reading.
For the final effect, the internet may shorten the attention spans of people. In Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” he states that the “the deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle” (para 2). He explains that his attention has waned. Most people today do not want and struggle to read a long article unless it is “good”. This point Carr has can be argued both ways, positive and negative. Many of the responses to his paper point out that maybe people are becoming more demanding not stupid. The critics to his paper state that before the internet, people were only given small amount of topics to read and learn. Since they were specific, they would have greater depth. Today people are not only expected to keep up to date of the happenings in their home town, but also the news in the whole modern world. The internet is broadening human’s areas of thought, instead of restricting people to a few subjects. Back to Carr’s point of view, he is saying that people need the ability to go deep into subjects, but the internet is undermining people’s chance to have the capability. Thus, because there is an ongoing battle between ideas, the effect of the internet on people’s attention spans is both negative and positive; the effects may be positive to help people learn and read more, or negative by causing people to read shorter texts.
Generally, the many effects of technology on reading, such as the ease to find more content, reading becoming a necessity on the internet, accessibility of tools to help reading for new, struggling, and expert readers, and children and adults being able to read and learn what they want, are positive. There are negatives that people need to be aware of such as people reading full works less in their free time and people have shorter attention spans. Overall, the effect of technology is positive. People need to care about the effects because they use technology every day, and if the technology is having negative effects then people need to learn to overcome the effect. If technology silently took away all of people’s abilities to read, then nobody will be able to read this paper to learn why people stopped reading. Being able to read, write, and talk is one of the major characteristics that separates humans from animals. Humanity needs reading.

Works Cited
AYDEMİR, Zeynep (İLERİ), Ergün ÖZTÜRK, and M. Barış Horzum. "The Effect of Reading from Screen on The 5th Grade Elementary Students' Level of Reading Comprehension on Informative and Narrative Type of Texts." Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice 13.4 (2013): 2272-276. Academic Search Complete. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.
Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, July-Aug. 2008. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.
Ingram, Mathew. "Are We Living in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451?" Gigaom. Knowingly, Inc., 06 June 2012. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.
Iyengar, Sunil, Sarah Sullivan, Bonnie Nichols, Tom Bradshaw, Kelli Rogowski, and Mark Bauerlein. To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence. Rep. no. 47. Ed. Don Ball. NW Washington: National Endowment for the Arts, 2007.Arts.gov. National Endowment for the Arts, Nov. 2007. Web. 11 Apr. 2016.
Kirschenbaum, Mathew. "How Reading Is Being Reimagined." The Chronicle of Higher Education. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 07 Dec. 2007. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.
Le Guin, Ursula K. "The Death of the Book." Book View Cafe Blog. Book View Cafe Blog, 26 Mar. 2012. Web. 19 Apr. 2016. <http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2012/03/26/the-death-of-the-book/>.
Mead, Rebecca. "Learn Different." New Yorker 07 Mar. 2016: 36-N/a. ProQuest Central. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.
Oishi, Lindsay. "Word by Word: RSVP Technology Can Transform the Reading Experience." Technology & Learning Oct. 2007: 48.Science in Context. Web. 13 Apr. 2016.
Taylor, Mary F. "Digital Reading: A Look at a Second Grade Class." School Library Monthly 29.2 (2012): 11-14. ProQuest Central. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.