Redefining Literacy in the AI Era: The Shift from Linear to Fragmented Reading

In this blog post, I discuss how literacy is evolving—a concept that has fascinated humanity since the advent of long-distance communication technologies such as the telegraph and telephone. Nowadays, our interaction with information is marked by its agility and rapidity, as demonstrated by AI advancements like ChatGPT from OpenAI.

Print magazines line a newsstand at the airport.

The way we access tools online is altering how we access texts. When Google search was first developed in the late '90s, the shift was from looking up information in print media to finding information online. However, we did not know it then, but search was a static, linear form of reading, not much different from how we generally read – in clusters of words and phrases, placed one after the other. Now, computer programmers have built tools designed to make savvy deductions on matters ranging from "The Best Way to Write a Cover Letter" to "Romanticism in Britain in the late 19th century." Instead of 'finding' what we need, we are 'sourcing' it. It's incredible, really. These generative AI models, including others like Google’s Bard (now, Gemini) and Bing’s Copilot, are built on extensive datasets, which range from Shakespeare's works to modern product labels. However, the opacity surrounding these datasets raises critical questions about transparency and intellectual property.

Consider the hypothetical 'Books three' corpus, comprising 157,000 copyrighted books. The file is purportedly an illegal 'scrape' of proprietary content The use of such a comprehensive dataset in AI training could potentially revolutionize our access to literature. This aligns with my vision of immediate access to any book, a dream that once felt unattainable.

The transformation in literacy is stark when we look back historically. In the past, literature was an auditory experience, where figures like St. Ambrose and Augustine engaged with texts through oral recitation. In this iteration of reading, words were vocal, heard, and disruptive. So, when Augustine saw his teacher Ambrose reading silently one day, it was a surprise to the young priest. That Ambrose could read to himself, without whispering the words, was a revelation. Recalling my time as Brother Bede, when I was a Benedictine monk, I remember being taught that in St. Benedict's 'Rule,' he emphasized the importance of reading out loud, contrasting with our present view of reading as a solitary, silent activity. And I realized that I spend most of my time reading silently, but when I do read out loud, it is a different, qualitative experience. I can feel the difference and can imagine being like Augustine, feeling his surprise when he saw Ambrose read silently – it blew his mind. Another shift in literacy is on its way, and it is just as, or more, mind-blowing than silent reading.

Certainly, it is mandatory to mention that the Gutenberg printing press was a pivotal moment in literacy, enabling widespread distribution of books, thus changing the way information was disseminated. In 2024, the proliferation of printed and digital materials further morphs our interaction with texts like 'Don Quixote', 'Arabian Nights', and contemporary literature. When books were first made affordable to a growing middle class, the modern-day educational system also developed, and while the ability to read and write was a luxury afforded only to the upper classes, the clergy, and those at the top echelon of the governing state, they found themselves not the only folk who benefited from literacy and reading. I cannot imagine myself not being able to read. An older man in my building was asking me about the gas bill, wondering if it had risen for me. I showed him my bill, and he meekly told me, "Oh, that's okay. I believe you." He was Mandarin-speaking, and I knew he knew a little English, but when I showed him a translation explaining that the building was reinstalling some pipes, he immediately told me, "I don't read that type of Chinese." I realized that I had known him for a long time and it was true, I had never seen him read, and he never liked to receive written messages, always preferring one-on-one conversations. I had a moment of realization that he lived in a more limited world than someone who was literate, but he seemed okay, thriving really. He maintained his backyard with pear trees and figs, and in the summer, massive tomatoes grew on a vine along the back red brick of the house. And I definitely do not know how to grow a garden the way he does; it is a loving exercise and I admire it. An eighty-year-old man doing the work, and I feel this strange sense of embarrassment, like I realize I am not as educated as he is, even though I can read fairly well, and if I want to, I can also read in a couple of other languages. My entire life revolves around words and literacy. It is my bread and butter. But still, there is something about the immediacy of the oral word, the spoken, that feels legitimate to me.

Our age is marked by AI-assisted and multimedia reading experiences. I just received a response today from one of my students – a short written response on the theme of curiosity as it develops in a passage from Ovid. But I had him talk about it one-on-one, and the eloquence that was in the written words was lost. And as I listened to him speak, I realized that he had indeed read the text; that was not the problem; he had not understood it. He would have to sit with Ovid a bit more. But is that something we still do? Long, sustained, silent reading, like Ambrose in his study? Even listening to audiobooks – which I actually think of as the purest way to experience literature, the way Homer would have spoken the words of the Odyssey – is popular, and maybe that is a way back to an older iteration of speaking and listening. In a recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, 23 percent of Americans say they haven't read a book in whole or in part in the last year. The people who are not reading, according to the data, are high school graduates without a college degree. The poll data showed that "Hispanic adults, older adults, those living in households earning less than $30,000, and those who have a high school diploma or did not graduate from high school were among the most likely to report in that survey they had never been to a public library." But of those who read, literacy is more important than ever – and how we access information is critical for how we see ourselves in the future. Are we going to continue to be a society that still attends to words in the way that a professor of antiquity will learn Latin or Greek in order to read texts written in languages no one speaks or writes in anymore? We no longer solely read a book from start to finish. We consume content in various forms: watching videos, listening to podcasts, or even immersing ourselves in a VR device that places us within a 3D rendering of a play's setting. This multi-modal approach to literacy allows for a more dynamic and interactive engagement with text, challenging the traditional linear narrative.

This revolution in literacy is reshaping educational paradigms. Teachers will navigate a landscape where students have instant access to a vast array of texts and AI tools. Lessons will no longer be confined to structured units but will evolve into expansive, interactive explorations of literature and information.

The shift to this tech-integrated literacy might lead to a disconnection from our sense of humanity, necessitating escapes to technology-free zones for mental health. Resorts in remote locations, offering a respite from digital saturation, would become essential for re-grounding our human experience.

In summary, the way we relate to language and literacy is undergoing a profound transformation. We are moving from traditional, linear reading habits to fragmented, AI-integrated, and multi-modal literacy. This shift challenges us to rethink our approach to reading and its implications for our cognitive and social development.

Reflecting On Being A Teen Reader: A Literacy Autobiography

Thinking back on who I was as a teen reader puts into focus why adolescents need to develop steady habits of reading.

A Photograph of the Author as an Adolescent Reader

Taking A Course at Hunter College Encouraged Me To Think About the Adolescent Reader

During the Summer of Covid-19, I was planning to go to Chicago to learn about maps. But my plan was foiled, and I have been home this Summer like most of us. So. Never to sit idle for long, I enrolled in an Education class at Hunter College. Taking Adolescent Literacy, the professor has us plunging into the myriad forms of reading that we can have our students read, dissect, decode, translate, and take to sustaining levels of engagement. I love the course. It had me thinking of myself as a teen reader. So — I took a walk down memory lane, and I tried to envision who I was as a teen who read.

My Adolescent Experience in Literacy Began With An Ugly Divorce

My earliest memory as an adolescent reader stems from the transition I went to from Sixth to Seventh Grade. At that age, I was going through the expected change from a kid to a tween, and I had just gone through my parents' ugly divorce. In Fifth and Sixth grades, my academics had suffered, and I had achieved low scores in Math. I perceived myself as an average student even though I had read The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis. I had devoured stories, such as Hans Christian Anderson's "The Tinder Box," which I would listen to in concert with the audio on a Fisher-Price record player. It played 45 records, and you could check them out from the library.

Reading instruction in middle and junior high school was based on reading comprehension and discussion of the book. But I would often read the entire book by myself and not pay attention to the homework and sometimes do poorly on the end-of-the-reading exam. We read Tuck Everlasting, My Brother Sam is Dead, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Hatchet, and Mrs. Frisby and The Rats of N.I.M.H. — books I liked but I wanted to get through them so I could read other books! So when the exam came, I often forgot vital details about the "class book" because I was not in sync with the rest of the class.

Adventures in Junior High School in South Louisiana

In South Louisiana, where I am from, the school system has a separate school for Seventh and Eighth Grade called Junior High School. I don't remember being especially advanced in reading, but I do remember enjoying reading for pleasure. I kept a personal journal as a kid. I always had a book to read, and we often made trips to the public library, and I was a frequent visitor to my school's library as well. In Seventh Grade, I remember getting into trouble for reading Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton in History class. The book was propped up on my lap, and the teacher caught me with my head down too often. I often attempted to read really long, "adult" books just for fun — Stephen King's The Stand, and the Jack Ryan books by Tom Clancy (e.g., Clear and Present Danger and The Hunt For Red October).

Growing up gay, it was through reading novels that I discovered in the library that I learned that people like me existed. For example, Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar was a thin volume I found in the library's fiction section. It's about a young gay man coming to terms with his sexuality in the 1950s and 60s. Even books that are not explicitly about being gay rang true for me nevertheless, as in Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, Fade by Robert Cormier, and Selected Poems by Walt Whitman. That began a lifelong fascination with L.G.B.T.Q.+ Fiction and with reading as a means of self-reflection and a catalyst for personal growth — a practice I still continue to this day. One of my favorite books is Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz.

Challenging Me To Read a Non-American, Non-European Author Was an Illuminating Experience for a Fourteen-Year-Old

On Christmas Day Mom Made
Us Read from the New Testament Recounting
the Gospel Narrative of Christ's Birth

I had a wake-up call, though, in high school, when a teacher told me to more carefully choose the books I read. I did not have a model for "close reading" — but in Ninth Grade, I joined my high school's "Library Committee" — an extracurricular club where we read a novel from the library's collection every two weeks. We met as a group to write book reviews and discuss the books. I remember I was told, "Read a book by a non-European, non-American author . . ." That was an intriguing challenge, so I read Nectar in a Sieve by Indian novelist Kamala Markandaya. I was struck by the description of poverty and despair. Still, the voice of the protagonist Rukhmani — stayed with me. Being a part of a club and having reading role models among my peers and other adults helped me to create a social experience around reading that I did not have. As a result, my performance in school improved. I made better grades in English, and I was bumped up to the Honors class in my Sophomore year.

I am lucky that I had excellent English teachers in high school that encouraged discussion about books. We were prompted to make connections to what we were reading. When we read Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, our teacher did an outstanding job of zooming out and said to us, "Okay. Don't get tripped up by the language. Well, this is a story about entering the woods, and the woods is a place of chaos, and the characters come out changed." As a teenager, I could relate to the theme of radical metamorphosis. At the end of the unit, we watched Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Pulitzer-award-winning musical Into the Woods. And later compared the text to Shakespeare — which turned out to be a beautiful text-to-text connection that I now use in my classroom.

As Adolescent Reader There Was a Disconnect Between "Reading for Pleasure" and "Reading to Succeed"

In Junior year, I did poorly on the standardized pre-tests in reading for the ACT., and SAT. While my classmates had taken test prep classes in the Summer, I was not prepared for the questions. My parents did not realize that I needed intervention because I was always doing something academic or doing my homework — and I made Bs and As consistently. In my parents' eyes, I was doing what I was supposed to do. I graduated from high school in 1998 with a G.P.A. just shy of a 3.5 by one-tenth of a point. I got into a small liberal arts college that focused more on writing and personality than test scores. But I sometimes wish that if I had been pushed harder in high school, my life would have turned out differently.

Who I Was As a Teen Reader Predicted Who I Became as an Adult

A Picture of the Author as
a High School English Teacher

So here I am now in the Summer of 2020. My adolescence feels like a world lived in a different galaxy. And I am a teacher! As a classroom teacher, decades removed from my own youth, who I am as a teacher, surprises me. 

Working with teenagers, I put a lot of emphasis on independent reading. I use websites like newsela.com to foster a love of learning and academic choice. I can remember when I taught Sixth grade a kid told me, "Mr. Roselli — I never see you with a book. But you say you love to read." I think it's because he only saw me teaching, or grading, or talking, or going from one class to another, and he never saw me doing a silent sustained reading. And that really struck me, and it made me think, you know, we live in a society where silent sustained reading is seen as antisocial. 

In the very fast-paced world of teaching, counter-intuitively, teachers do not have time, often, to commit themselves to a meaningful text. So. Now. I do small things to show my own life in reading. For instance, I give my students a top ten list of my favorite books. Or, I do subtle stuff like actually read with them or have my current book on my desk (which is an explosive investigative report on the Matthew Sheppard murder entitled The Book of Matt). 

As a teacher, I don't mind when kids go off track and read random texts independently. I keep a small classroom library, and I often use my own money to buy relevant books. For example, the novel The Hate U Give is a compelling read. It is told through the experience of a young Black girl who witnesses her best friend killed in a routine stopover by the police.

What's the takeaway? Who you were as an adolescent reader informs who you will become as an adult. And that's on period, boo.

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Library Poster: "Read a Book"

Printable poster from stonesoferasmus.com to encourage reading -- Read a book!

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100 Years at the New York Public Library in the Midst of City Budget Cuts

At the one hundred year exhibit of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, there were tours this past weekend of the stacks of the arts and humanities research library, the Stephen. A. Schwartzman building, the one with the iconic lions. The stacks are seven levels divided by catwalks (which also extend outward beneath Bryant Park). The stacks are beautifully hewn cast iron bulwarks donated by Andrew Carnegie. Walking along the catwalk, one can look down and see floor upon floor of sheer "book." To take such a tour stirs the soul and restores hope in humanity. The books are categorized by size (not by Dewey or LC, which are the two most popular category systems in the United States).  

Reading Books in the Rose Reading Room  

To read one of the books in the research collection means filling out a request slip and waiting fifteen minutes for your book to be retrieved by a page who, once it is located on the shelf, sends it up via a Ferris wheel conveyor belt. It is all so mechanically proper and print oriented. The card catalog was scrapped in 1983, but interestingly enough, even though the catalog is digitized now, the library took photographs of every card and bound the images twenty to a page in a printed dictionary catalog of the collection. Why do this? Librarians through the years made notes on cards indicating other sources in the collection to consult and other such marginalia that is beneficial for researchers. The bound dictionary catalog is a snapshot of the collection before it went digital. 

Even With a Glorious Library in Manhattan the Truth is Libraries Still Suffer from Inadequate Funding 

The sad news in the wake of such a glorious centennial celebration is that budget cuts plague public libraries even though library usage is at an all-time high. To advocate for libraries is so desperately needed. Libraries are a public service to be ranked with the necessity of schools, hospitals, fire houses and police stations that make up a viable, literate population. Please advocate for Libraries today.

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