The cultural act of reading is in flux. The dynamic,
contextual framework that is the text viewed on screen challenges our
understanding of the page. Some technologies seek to emulate the page,
to turn off the back light and enable reading outdoors in sunlight.
Other digital technologies aim to both sustain and augment the reader’s
experience of the text, moving beyond the paper page and into a new
conceptualisation of reading, with layers of texts, with choices of
views, with integrated multi and social media. This presentation
explores how we once read and how we now read often multivalent texts on
multiple screens. I query what has changed in these new modes of
knowledge representation, and what remains constant, and posit
challenges for future scholarly discourse.