AustLit

'This article has grown out of a debate generated by the publication of my essay titled ‘The Obscure Object of E-reading Desire’ as a blog entry on the literary journal Overland’s website on 31 October 2011 (Alizadeh). The essay proposed that, far from enhancing readerships and reading practices, the e-reader and other e-reading devices manufactured by a range of IT companies may in fact result in a decline in reading and could, in the words of my essay, ‘turn us into worse readers’. Following the publication of the essay, and in addition to receiving a number of replies in the blog’s comment thread, the theses of my essay were countered by Dr Jennifer Mitchell in her piece, ‘Writing and Reading in the Age of the Thrilling Unknown’, in which she depicted my proposal as one characterised by a ‘fear’ of technological progress, apparently similar to a nineteenth-century Romantic’s fear of the railways (Mitchell).' (Author's introduction)