Is That A Canon In Your Pocket?

Rather long, but this article, "Is That A Canon In Your Pocket?", provides sharp insights into how we read, moving from the history of it (scribes writing on papyrus by hand) to today (ebooks). An excerpt:

...I shuffled through the chapterless text until I found the section where the philosopher, via Socrates, offers one of the earliest critiques of the book. Socrates recounts a mythological story about the ancient divinity who invented writing. The god visited Egypt's king to boast of the written word, claiming that "once learned, it will make Egyptians wiser and will improve their memory". It is, the immortal explains, "a potion for memory and for wisdom".

The king is unimpressed, and says so:

"It will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practise using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from inside ... You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding."

Once past the irony of encountering this argument in the form of words on a page, millennia after the death of its author, it is worth noting how pertinent the criticism remains.

I won't copy and paste any more, though there are lot more interesting observations and passages in the article. I used to think that text is text, and it doesn't matter how you read, whether on paper or on the screen, as long as you're comfortable. In fact, a part of me still believes that, but after this piece, I'm not so certain anymore.