Active vs. Passive Reading

Our behaviors are often classified as either (inter)active or as passive, i.e., as either being independent or reciprocal, or the witnessing of performances actualized by other folks. Sometimes, though, goings-on that look as if they’re just observed are actually the ones in which we engage. Contemporary reading is one such endeavor.

Weigh that writing “convert[s] words from sounds into physical artifacts[, allows] messages to be separated from their creators [and allows] a message [to] be transported to a distant receiver” (Schement and Mokros, 8-11). Additionally, at least in cyberspace, it allows addressees to interrelate with dispatchers. Present day technology enables us audiences to jump away from a page of text before we fully scroll through it as well as to right away, directly comment, to the world, on the very site on which “bothersome” ideas appear.

Per electing to disregard what we’re consuming and then to seek erudition or entertainment elsewhere, it’s known that the Net has a plethora of sources for even fragments of a notion. Unlike the era when books were handwritten, hence rare, nowadays, there are “over 1.5 billion websites on the world wide web” (“Total number [sic] of Websites”). We vote with our feet, per se, and do so with immediacy.

To boot, in this day and age, we can issue comments on the declarations offered to us. Whereas printed data is fairly passive, electronically communicated substance is not. Cutting-edge readers can ignore stupidity, seek the good in authors’ works, or volley a response to delivered communications.

We’re no longer limited to op-eds in newspapers or to banning books from schools or libraries. Today, if assemblages of words bothers us, we can stomp our feet, so to speak. After all, much of what currently fills the Internet is tosh.

Yet, our seemingly automatic response to electronic transcripts is, at times, unfortunate.

Reading is supposed to teach us who we are…to make us more worldly, more introspective, more empathetic and more intelligent. It’s…democratic and elitist, soothing and challenging, something we do for its own sake and as a means to various cultural, material and moral ends…It’s essential to social progress, democratic citizenship, good government and general enlightenment (Corral)

Too often, we modern readers consider leaving works partially read or consider that our relatively trite responses to them is a kind of game. Sadly, this nature of play produces poor results. “[A] lot of people are drawn to reading negative comment sections, and it’s hurting our mental health. People have reported many adverse effects from all this negativity including depression, increased anxiety, and shortened attention spans” (Woodman). Plus, we’ve become so regularly defensive to outlying wisdoms as to disallow any impressions antithetical to our own to fall away rather than to be examined. Consequently, our ability to synthesize new or improved positions has diminished.

On balance, regrettably, on occasion, counterarguments to the stuffs we read are deserved, even crucial. See, certain transmission concierges still act entitled. Some gatekeepers yet maintain that if they’ve been given control over pages, their view is ineludibly truth. What’s more, this ill-informed perspective of theirs has roots.

Long ago, the printing press was celebrated as linking the here and now with eternity and with connecting ideology to society (Postman, 1990b). Typography, in general, impacted how society sustained concepts in that “every form of inquiry[’s] texts [became] anomalous and obtrusive rather than normal exemplifications of a well-understood activity” (Gary Shapiro, 3). We used to treat published groups of thoughts as cultural depositories and objections to them as, in the least,  meddlesome.

Consider that the exemplars often referenced in Western, secular higher education. E.g., “greats” such as Plato and Aristotle, left behind considerable amounts of documents, which “addressed themselves to [individuals] of wealth, position and taste” (Arnold, 62). Those manuscripts were of limited use to the majority of the population, i.e., to members of the lower classes. Bear in mind that literacy was not only rare but socially powerful. Therefore, caretakers of printed matters were persons who were lauded.

In our world, in contrast, chirographic mastery “produces far too much [‘]is[’] language too early and does not encourage a [pure] style of elocution, diction, and expression” (Havelock, 1986a, 202). Although, overall, “creation” is considered to be “emulation,” “imitation,” or “mimesis,” (North, 10), in our time, “the [‘]personal blog,[’ for example,] as we’ve come to know it [is] displayed in reverse chronological order[; it] act[s] more like free-form, work in-progress wikis” (Appleton) than like classic tomes. That is, these days, “digital gardening is not about specific tools—it’s not a WordPress plugin, Gatsby theme, or Jekyll template. It’s a different way of thinking about our online behaviour around information—one that accumulates personal knowledge over time in an explorable space” (Appleton). Simply, our ability to respond to electronically distributed discussions has created a morass of bunkum.

All in all, whereas bookishness used to belong solely to the privileged, now, anyone with Internet access can, and, often too readily, does, keep “transparent” public discourse going. The resulting, “collaborative” flood of codswallop often prevents the emergence of truth.While the past’s limiting of who might sway the populace was problematic, so, too, is the present’s unconstrained admission to shared conversations. There are times and places when it’s better for us, collectively, to read more passively.

Sources:

Appleton, Maggie. “A Brief History and Ethos of the Digital Garden: A newly revised philosophy for publishing personal knowledge on the web” [sic]. Substack. Maggieappleton.com/garden-history?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email. Accessed 6 Dec. 2023.

Arnold, Edward Vernon. Roman Stoicism. Cambridge UP, 1911.

Corral, Rodrigo. “Everyone loves reading. Why are we so afraid of it?” [sic]. New York Times. 23 Jun. 2023. nytimes.com/2023/06/21/books/review/book-bans-humanities-ai.html. Accessed 16 Jun. 2024.

Havelock, Eric. A. “After Words: A Postscript.” Pre/text. 7.3-4. 1986a, 201-208.

North, Helen. “The Use of Poetry in the Training of the Ancient Orator.” Traditio. 8. 1952, 1-33.

Postman, Neil. “Technology and Ideology.” International Communication Association Convention. U. Dublin, 1990.

Schement, Jorge G. and Hartmut B. Mokros. “The Social and Historical Construction of the Idea of Information as Thing.” International Communication Association Convention. U Dublin, 1990.

Shapiro, Gary. “What was Literary History? A Critical Synthesis.” Social Epistemology. 2.1. 1988, 3-19.

“Total number [sic] of Websites. internet live stats [sic]. internetlivestats.com/total-number-of-websites. Accessed 25 Nov. 2024.”

Woodman, Molly. “Avoiding the Comment Section.” Kim Foundation. 31 May, 2023.thekimfoundation.org/avoiding-the-comment-section.  Accessed 25 Nov. 2025.