I was reading an interesting article over at the TeleRead blog titled "ThoutReader Meets Scholarly Book: An Experiment and Review" and one particular passage really caught my eye.

"...Until hardware comes out that makes me feel like I’m reading a book instead of cruising the web, the decrease in concentration caused by my web-ADD will constrain me to p-books; when I’m reading something serious, I want to get away from all the distractions of the Internet, not have them at my fingertips...."

Emphasis mine.

This is the aspect of ebooks that makes devices like the Sony Reader more interesting and compelling. It's similar to a description I once read about watching movies on a computer. When you are using your computer, you are leaning forward - ready to interact. When you are watching a movie on your television, you are leaning backward, expecting not to interact. These postures are indicative of the context and so the interface or device must take them into account.

Reading books on your computer when you are leaning forward invites interaction, linking and distraction. Why do you think they call it a "browser" and not a "reader".

Oddly enough, this was one reason why we discarded the idea of putting CALI lessons into a DVD format. The context was all wrong. Students expect to interact with CALI lessons - leaning forward, and CALI lessons on the television invite the user to lean backward - be passive. (I should note that it was suggested that CALI lessons on the television would make an interesting drinking game for law students on Friday nights like Trivial Pursuit DVD).

It's not as simple as this, however.

When you are reading a novel or a long passage, there is some passivity to this. When you are interacting, there is some interactivity to this. Duh. But reading a textbook or studying an educational subject can have elements of both. Sometimes you are absorbing the information, sometimes you want to take notes, make links, look something up, etc. Some people are constantly in this mode with everything they read, but I would suggest that most people are in this mode more often when they are reading textbooks. Learning is a series of interspersed periods of absorb and integrate, passive and active, learning backward and leaning forward.

When I am browsing the web or reviewing new articles in my news reader, I am in a semi-between state of passive and active (pactive?), and when I find something where I want to drill down, I lean forward and become active. If it is a long-ish article, I lean back and become passive.

I could lay this on the device manufacturers and say that they must design their ebook readers to be capable in either situation so that I can transition easily between active, pactive and passive. The television is pretty passive, with a small amount of active via the remote. The laptop is pretty active and too heavy to lean back on. The new lighter, smaller, ebook readers that are coming out in the next few weeks might hit that sweet spot that is pactive.

We'll see.