The history of reading or writing is a unique one dating far back to the civilization ages to what is available today. Various forms of writing have emerged ranging from the simple forms to the more complicated types each with one mission of transmitting knowledge over time. According to Lerer (2013), the oldest form of writing was a scroll, which was used by the Ancient posed many challenges due to its enormity. The Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Egyptians Later a single wooden block lined with wax emerged where one would write on using a stylus. The learner would then melt the wax over a candle to find a writing space in the next session. Later people learned that they could sew two blocks of wood together an idea that gave rise to the codex, which is a form of a bound book. The codex came in handy as one could preserve more writing as compared to the wooden blocks or the scrolls.
In later centuries people discovered that they could sew animal skins together to get a codex or a bound book to enable vertical reading. The codex as per Lerer (2013) brought about a revolution on how people read and wrote texts. The early Christians were the greatest beneficiaries of this new development. They were able to write longer and elaborate scriptures, which St Augustine at one time read and got great revelation, which led to his salvation. The bound book was indeed important as it helped individuals learn about their world.
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The later centuries have however shifted attention to how people read and write with the emergence of computers in the 1980s and the 1990s. The former absorption that books through the posture assumed by the reader provided have been replaced by screen reading which is theatrical as reader focus on the screens. However, efforts have been made to go back to such absorption through e-books. Additionally, Lerer (2013) agrees that people are still following the olden reading and writing styles using codes found in Text messages and emails.
References
Lerer, S. (2013). The History of Reading and the Literate Life. Available at: https://youtu.be/X_Z5HNRC_Ic (Accessed on 23 September 2017).
