Reader Obligations on the Interactive Web

The transpersonal activity of reading shapes online content as much as writing does.

August 20, 2006

In the beginning of August, 2006, I published an article in A List Apart about being a faithful writer, especially on the web. Much has been written about the structure of“web writing”, though the more delicate points of writing on the web have been oft ignored. As true as that is, even less attention is paid to the art of reading, though it’s no small wonder why. Writing for the web has so many practical applications, where a discussion of reading has only personal and private ramifications. Yet I don’t think any discussion of the relationship between reader and writer is truly complete if we ignore the reader’s role.

I stumbled upon this thought-provoking piece by Melle who asks the essential question, “Do readers have obligations to writers?” I’d like to take a moment to explore the obligations that readers have to writers, as well as the obligations of readers-cum-writers to the web community.

A few years ago, I taught an online class on reading as a spiritual discipline. Not a few of my students indicated that they’d never been introduced to the notion of “critical reading” in school, and had no idea was constituted a “good reader”. With American public education being what it is, it is unsurprising how many people don’t know anything about critical reading, but as expected as it may be it’s extremely unfortunate. As the proliferation of unchecked and unsubstantiated text media increases, people who don’t know how to extract the most from what they read are at a significant disadvantage. How can we adequately evaluate the accuracy, meaning, or relevance of what we read if we don’t know how to approach the writing?

Reading is a private, solitary activity. We read alone, taking the words of another person in another time and place and making them meaningful to our lives and positions. We read for various reasons: entertainment, challenge, or information. But whatever we hope to gain from what we read, we are best served as readers when we read the words as they are intended before making any judgment or evaluation. We should first read the text as though we have no vested interest in the content, for our first task as a reader is to hear the writer in her own voice. Writing is a holistic process, and the text itself is something of an organism. It has structure, words, language, thoughts, and direction. We need to see all of these things completely before we can evaluate any of them separately. If we stop to deconstruct the author’s words or her intention before we hear her out completely, we do her a disservice as well as ourselves.

The longer the work, the more difficult this becomes, however, and I wouldn’t suggest that anyone must read a book through to completion before forming opinions or asking questions. But it is a good idea to at least get through a paragraph or a complete thought before moving on the next stage of critical reading. Allow the writer the courtesy of bringing her point to fruition. Stay with her train of thought before suggesting another course.

Once we’ve read the piece as intended, our task is to ask questions, not only about the words on the page but about the ideas presented, about the author herself. Why is she writing this? Do I agree with what she’s saying? Are her suggestions pertinent to me and my situation? This is often easier said than done; a good writer takes us on a journey into her world, pointing out landmarks we’ve never seen, limning a horizon we’ve never imagined. Caught up in the words of this skilled writer, we may find ourselves so carried away by her words that we lose ourselves in them. This is both a good and a difficult thing: reading should be an engrossing activity. If it isn’t, the writer hasn’t done her job. On the other hand, if we are to read critically, we can’t allow ourselves to be so engrossed that we forget our job: to challenge, to question, to evaluate, to consider.

On the internet where so much compelling content is generated by active reader-writer engagement, the role of the critical reader has become even more important. In a recent address at Linuxworld, Lawrence Lessig, law professor at Stanford University, spoke about our “read-only” culture. We grew up in a world of media not to be altered by the common person. Though academia has a long history of scholars writing responses or rebuttals to another scholar’s positions or research, the average person has seldom had a voice, as publication was a difficult process owned by large corporate houses.

With the onset of the digital age, however, the read-only culture is giving way to a true read-write culture, where every person has the potential to be heard. Readers are no longer relegated to a silent role; they are active participants in the creation and development of content on the web. A single conversation may span several blogs, websites, and articles, spiraling into different dimensions and incorporating many voices along the way. The beauty of the web is that readers and writers are roles which are constantly in flux, one bleeding into another. Hypertext allows one writer not only to give a nod to another but to immediately integrate another writer’s story into her own work without significantly altering the voice of that writer. Hypertext takes a reader on a winding journey whose course isn’t always predictable. Along that journey, readers have the opportunity to leave their footprints, to engage in conversations they would have been unable to participate in before. The reader turned writer plays an important role in the interactive, social web; just as the critical reader asks questions and evaluates, so the online reader poses these questions to the author herself. Online, the reader is granted the freedom to occupy vacant space left by the writer, to present unanswered questions, to explore uncharted territory. Online readers who participate in the unfolding web make writers write more compelling, more thoughtful content. The exchange facilitates the enrichment of the world wide web’s very character.

Though it’s clear that the role of the reader is changing, Melle’s important question remains: do readers have obligations to the writers they read?

In my article on cultural appropriation, I argue that nobody much cares what individuals do in the privacy of their homes; no culture is harmed if I borrow bits and pieces of that culture in my own private practice. The only time I affect another culture is when I take my practice public, when I portray someone else’s culture in a way I have not been invited to and in a manner I am not qualified for. The same is true for the reader. If a reader does not read critically, if he doesn’t live up to a writer’s intellectual demands, he is the only person affected. There is no outward accountability on the reader’s behalf. In the privacy of his mind, he is the only person who suffers from failing to live up to his intellectual obligation to the writer.

However, due to the nature of the web, so many readers become writers, and it here that his obligation really matters. When the reader begins his commentary on what he has read, when he begins to add his voice to the work, he must be accountable. His words shape the context of the original writing. They shape the way other readers will interact with the text. And because of that, his remarks should be relevant to what is written, and not overly critical of what is not said. It is tempting for a critical reader to put his wishes and agenda upon the writer and claim, “I wish she had written more about X and less about Y”. While there are certainly instances where it is important to note what a writer didn’t say or which key points she may have ignored, in an immediate response venue such as the online world, readers do best to follow the writer’s given thoughts. Omissions are sometimes deliberate, for the writer may intend to explore the subject in greater detail or from another angle later on. While readers should occupy vacancies left by a writer, the primary obligation of the reader is to what is said, not what remains unsaid (Providing that what is said is accurate, and that the omission doesn’t change the verity of the author’s words.)

Writing is the beginning of a great conversation, but no work is complete until someone reads what is written. The conversation begins with a single thought, a single printed word, but the conversation must culminate in someone’s reception, someone’s understanding, someone’s participation. This is what we do when we read: we immerse ourselves in someone else’s world, live from her point of view, and imagine what the world is for the writer—how the world is for the subject herself, not how it would be like for us. This is important: as writing is intensely personal, reading must be intensely transpersonal. We must first see the text for what it is, as the author intended. It is only after we process the words in this manner than we can move on to processing them for ourselves, through the lenses of our experiences and beliefs. This is a very difficult activity, and many readers skip the first part and move directly to interpretation, filling the words with our voices rather than hearing the writer. This is not unlike participating in the “conversation” where we aren’t so much listening as waiting for our turn to speak. Reading must be a dialogue; it requires patience and thoughtfulness. These are our primary obligations.

The immediacy of the web presents a plethora of opportunity that our read-only culture is only beginning to understand and utilize. The intimate interaction of reader and writer, and the mutability of these roles, changes the way we understand writing and at reading. No longer merely a silent role, the reader plays an important part in shaping online content, and in changing the way authors write for the web.

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