Comments on: A tentative stab at “Is listening reading?”

By: tubeyes

tubeyes — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:10:38 +0000

I would saw that they should both equally viewed as “reading”. In the sense that they both are obtaining and understanding information. As long as you can take in the information and understand it, then what makes one better than another? I personally have read and “read” books simultaneously, chapter for chapter, and I found I could recall information from various chapters just the same regardless of the medium that the information was served. And any nay-sayers of this are simply being intolerant ableists!

Nice dropping of grok by the way, I’m currently “reading” SiaSL right now! Thanks for MCing Chessmen!

By: hugh

hugh — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:38:15 +0000

i always find this a fascinating discussion. There has been some fMRI work on this and indeed, for most people, the evidence is that “reading” text and listening to audiotext does not fire the same brain areas.

but what i’ve always found interesting is that some people think this results in a different value of the experience - ie reading = more valuable; listening = less value… further ie, you should read, and listening is cheating.

which, of course, is just silly.

and anyway, i’ve always said that what LV does is get people to record texts, which is a far deeper connection to the text than either “just” reading or listening.

By: mandarine

mandarine — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 05:41:00 +0000

I have written something about how listening to a monotone recording really feels like reading.

In my opinion, listening to audiobooks is just as sensual as reading from paper. It’s just not the same senses.

Reading an e-book from a screen might be a notch lower on the sensual scale, though. Check my article on “p-books” for a little fun around this topic…

PS: sec. 8 done - onto sec. 9