Reading the Broadview Introduction as well as Professor Pressman’s essay, Old Media/ New Media was fascinating. From the examination and tracing of epochs, categorizing new and emerging forms of media to the evolution of reading in all its forms, it’s clear to see that, through many cultural shifts and religious/ industrial revolutions, reading and books in general have taken various forms, reflecting their cultural placement in that time.

I want to highlight the evolution of reading because I think its very pertinent to us right now. I’ve also never read a deconstruction of it and it particularly caught my eye. The introduction mentions an example where the Theologian St. Augustine observes his mentor reading silently: “He recalls how”[w]hen[Ambrose] read, his eyes scanned the page and his heart sought out the meaning, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still.” Augustine seems to have found silent reading unusual enough to be worth commenting on. Before this, he implies, most people vocalized the text when they read, even if they were reading to themselves.” (Levy & Mole xvii). Later in the text Levy and Mole highlight how Alexander the Great did so as well but that the concept of silent reading as a whole took a while to catch on, as reading aloud was so ingrained in most cultures if not all (xvii). Thinking about this made me realize how we are currently shifting into a new era of reading and how back then there was the emergence of reading silently stemming from reading aloud.

From having an orator read from a scroll in front of a crowd in antiquity to children being read aloud bedtime stories as well as oral presentations in class, reading aloud has always been a crucial form of learning, retaining, and communicating. But the blooming popularity of audiobooks and reading on a screen creates a drastic shift yet again. Although I do want to point out that one doesn’t take over the other: “Media do not replace one another in a clear, linear succession but instead evolve in a more complex ecology of interrelated feedback loops” (Pressman 2).

I am curious to see where the remediation of reading goes. How the process of intensive and extensive reading change due to technological advancement. How the syncretism of technology and reading converges. We are already seeing it now with books as a fetishized object, a phenomenon professor Pressman calls “Bookishness”: ” -the result of new media’s impact on
literature’s old media, and it is one example of the complex, poetic, and mutually generative relationship between old and new media.”(3).

Right now, since we are at the dawn of this new age, I feel like it’s unbalanced and overwhelming how reading is changing, but hopefully, with time, once settled(audiobooks, AI), we will learn how to harness both mediums and be able to work in tandem with one another, creating syncretism between the two. That is my hope at least.