origin of judging books by their covers? the sociocultural influences on whether a book is good enough for decent cover design/which audience it is targeting/etc.?

That is what I referring to above

I find this very interesting, particularly in my experience at Candler. The navigationally oriented form of reading seems to insist upon a "point" or a "main idea" and therefore also a "right answer." How do you know the material to pass a test? You know the key points. But I think it's exactly this that many people get at when they're concerned about both the future of education and the way in which reading digitally can impact thinking and learning. If we are looking for bite-sized pieces of information and we want increasingly structured ways of viewing the world, then it is easier to miss nuance. It's easier to miss linking ideas, the broader scope and context.

In lectures I've been in at Candler, I can usually tell whether someone likes or doesn't like a professor's lectures based on whether they wanted powerpoint slides with main points or were able to journey with that professor into broader world. (This is for professors gifted at lecturing, sometimes that's just not someone's strength and everyone agrees it was rough). And when we've argued over pedagogy in these instances, ultimately we're arguing over whether the subject material is for the transmission of information solely or the experience of information.

I'll end my rant here, but I find this fascinating (and of course, chicken or egg, has our historic nature to systematize brought about the use and creation of technologies in this way)

That's super interesting! If we typically read text in 15-20 letter/word bits, how do images change that calculus if at all?

Also this reminds me of something our TA in Monastic Theology brought up about how reading online specifically is a devolution of reading technology. Basically, she said that the bound book was an evolution to the scroll and "scrolling" on the internet was reverting back to something many people had found unhelpful. So in addition to Johnson's questions about multi-tasking and other elements of online reading changing the mechanics, I'm also wondering in what ways scrolling v. pagination (that's probably not the right word for what I mean, but having pages and moving between them) changes how we physically and intellectually read. I find this especially interesting since in many ebooks I've used, they've recreated this sense of "pages" with having to "flip" the page rather than scroll.

fantastic metaphor there

also when we mistakenly pit literacy v. orality we tend to give higher status to one over the other, which can discount cultures without as robust literary cultures.

hot take, but I like it