Good thinking. I've been spending a lot less of my at-home time at the screen lately, and more of it reading dead trees. Somewhere in my 30s, I lost my willingness, or ability, or patience for reading anything longer than a couple of pages. Somehow, I regained it, so I'm trying to make up for lost time.
Continuing the non-political thread veer... :)
I do spend too much time in front of the screen, but not in lengthy reading of a single thing. That "two page" thing is about my limit for actually reading (versus perusing) on the screen. I hate reading on the screen and find I lose patience and want to move on to something else. In fact I think a couple of years ago, I posted a link to research into how the Internet is making us all less patient and creating people who "multi-multi-task" jumping around from one thing to another, by actually changing the way our brains work. Think about how you might read a news story with a bunch of links in it, and the next thing you know, you have a dozen tabs open in your browser.
I've taken that to heart and have tried to be better about my screen time. I often have to force myself, but I'll break off an internet session to do something like play computer chess (on a computerized physical keyboard, not on the computer) that requires me to concentrate on tasks for long periods. Or just go outside into the real world and work on a project. The one area where I wish I could be better is leaving the interwebz at home when I go on vacation. But I find it dang difficult. The phone and Google nav and Yelp are just so darn convenient that they are approaching "must have" status, and then it makes it much harder not to waste time doing other stuff online if I'm "already online anyway..."
As for reading, I have never been able to read books online, whether on the computer or tablets, to include the Kindle Fire. It just bugs me to do so. The dedicated Kindle reader is another story and for me, one of the greatest non-critical inventions of all time. To me, it's just like reading a physical book. It gives me the feel of reading a book with the convenience of a lightweight device that holds an entire library.
I do prefer technical manuals, etc on the computer because I generally don't read them cover to cover, but rather am always looking up specific stuff. So being able to quickly search for what I want is a convenience, as well as being able to quickly print specific sections and photos to use on whatever I'm working on.
