Reading texts on computers is unpleasant

The real growth in the adoption of e-books will happen when the traditional book is deconstructed and reconstructed (textually, behaviorally and commercially) in order to create new paradigms for storing and delivering content in electronic forms. Carden, 2008

• Continuous-scroll digital reading uncomfortably disrupts object permanence
• Poor performance disrupts nonlinear reading in digital reading
• Maintaining multiple reading positions is difficult when reading digitally
• Parallel reading is mostly impossible in digital reading
• Few digital reading environments support marginal notes
• Digital annotation is too formal
• Backlit displays limit computers to interiors

This is an important problem because Mass adoption of written media with novel cognitive supports requires mass adoption of reading on computers (or else we need Methods for bringing dynamic mediums to physical reading contexts).

Related but separate:

• Deep focus comes more easily for me when developing ideas in a paper notebook, rather than with a computer

References

Carden, M. T. J. (2008). E-Books are not books. Proceeding of the 2008 ACM Workshop on Research Advances in Large Digital Book Repositories - BooksOnline ’08, 9. https://doi.org/10.1145/1458412.1458416