Encounter between reading on paper and screen reading: towards a grammar of reading in digital environments

Abstract

In the digital age the ways of reading have experienced transformations that alter traditional dynamics and coordinates of space and time. For more than five hundred years the written language- printed and linear- has been characteristically at the epicenter of knowledge, leaving in a subordinate position other ways of acquiring knowledge. This paper describes the characteristics of digital reading, that establishes a first step toward a grammar of digital reading. Further, those characteristics are defined through cognitive, haptics and hipertextual issues. This paper emphasizes how screen reading does not aspire to compete with traditional reading because the past and present can be conjugated in new forms of cultural hybridizations. It also outlines an overview of the role of reading in the transmedia narrative. Understanding the aspects that interest the nature of digital reading is one of the ways to move forward with critical knowledge in virtual scenarios that offer us new possibilities of creation and access to knowledge.