If hyper and deep attention indeed describe the cognitive modes of the reader, then how can hyper and deep reading itself be characterized? To answer this, enter the commonplace book.



In the early modern period, whenever readers found a particularly meaningful and concise passage, they transcribed it into a commonplace notebook. As Robert Darnton informs us,

Unlike modern readers, who follow the flow of a narrative from beginning to end (unless they are digital natives and click through texts on machines), early modern Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. Then they reread the copies and rearranged the patterns while adding more excerpts. Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities. (149-150).

Darnton describes a fragmentary reading whose very nonlinearity is a consequence of the writerly practice of copying texts onto various parts of the commonplace book. In a related fashion, our digital creation of a journal reassembles our contents into the "patterns" of paths and connections of tags. Moreover, this digital nonlinearity can describe the sort of reading our audiences will develop. Of course, paths foster linear sequential reading, whereas tags encourage nonlinearity. Yet what would happen if our essay has multiple paths, like this Scalar report? Then audiences may be jumping from path to path, so their linear progress through one path is disrupted and discontinued once they jump from path to path. You might find that some of the paths of this Scalar report intersect, and you might find yourself reading, then, in a non-linear and discontinuous fashion.

This reading, both early modern and digital, can also be called "segmental," which is Darnton's description for the commonplace readers' reading method. Segmental reading, according to Darnton, concentrates "on small chunks of text" and jumps "from book to book, rather than sequentially" (16in9). Segmentation is what a path does. As it has been stated already, the long-form original is transformed into short-form segments. There is nothing new under the sun. Digital reading merely resurrects the reading styles of our early modern predecessors.

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