Grapheme and Pixel: The Culture of Reading in the Digital Age
It has been two decades since Umberto Eco’s first contemplations on the subject of media influence on the process of reading were poured into his “From Internet to Gutenberg” study. The text that is laid before you - “Grapheme vs Pixel - culture of reading in a digital age” is a communication attempt to Eco’s essence, in order to clarify what conditions the newness in the reading process.The purpose of our study is to challenge the modern reader and community through polemic dialogue, starting with Eco’s framework, arguing it. Thwarting the classical, in this context, linear reading and digital reading as experienced categories, out of which the first has it’s foothold in past and present equally, as well as theoretical structure. This study underlines media influence on forming reading habits, reader-text relations, even the thoroughly altered culture of reading as a sociological and culturological phenomenon conditioned with new technological achievements, new carriers of information, new mediums. A start from an altered philosophy of reading opens a plethora of problematic questions that are not limited neither to the reading audience, nor text, but rather dive into the departments of methodology, remote studying, linguistics and legalities, hypertext, that is - departments of new literacy and new introduction of literacy to the contemporaryand future reader.The study also points out the accountability of the academic community, the state, and society towards the subjects in question that should be in part resolved through the educational process in the form of a systematic approach of society to shape the reader’s personality, reading competence, and functional digital media literacy.