The project E-Read was born at the end of 2014, within the framework program of the European Union Horizon 2020. It is made up of more than 150 scientists from thirty countries, under the direction of the Norwegian Anne Margen, seconded by the Dutch Adrian van der Weel. It is an interdisciplinary initiative, bringing together psychologists, educationalists, neurologists, sociologists and anthropologists. They are investigating the future of reading in the age of digitalization by examining both the individual and the social dimension of new uses. The different groups of work study every conceivable aspect of reading, from the intellectual to the emotional, including ergonomic aspects (posture is important: our elders knew this when they scolded us for bringing our eyes too close to the paper).

Screens, the visible face of new technologies, seem to impose themselves irresistibly, both at work and in leisure and daily life in general. The Education is not spared from this hegemony, and when politicians or educational center managers want to ponder the progress made, they boast about the issue of computers, blackboards or digital backpacks in their schools. The disappearance of paper books and notebooks is presented as the ultimate in progress.

But before we throw ourselves wholeheartedly into the new technology, we should answer the questions posed by ERead: How do screens influence our ability to remember what we read? Are there differences between different groups of users: children and the elderly, new readers and old readers, men and women?

Beyond the superficial contrast between apocalyptic and integrated, here is a group of researchers who strive to rigorously analyze the scope of these new technological developments. data well founded, rather than prejudices or simple impressions, are the best basis for a productive discussion .

The advantages of digital instruments are obvious: enormous storage capacity, with an almost unlimited availability of texts; the size of the letters and their illumination can be adjusted; it is easy to establish connections and to switch between screens.

However, digitization also has drawbacks: it is not easy to read long texts on the screen; what is read is less easily remembered; the emotional connection with the content decreases; the screen hinders intellectual comprehension of what is read; concentration is lost, as users tend to fidget and combine reading with the use of Youtube, Whatsapp or Facebook. Researchers are finding other more background effects, already noticeable in young children: screen dependence, which often turns into addiction, leads to losing contact direct with physical and social reality. Increasingly, the experience of the world is mediated by the screen, which implies a distancing from the real world. To be merely a spectator is not to exist," said Karl Jaspers sixty years ago in the face of the unstoppable advance of cinema and television. Digital natives easily suffer from notable anthropological deficiencies: lack of empathy and little social life; impoverishment of fantasy; less capacity for concentration; lack of discipline; very limited vocabulary; difficulty in abstract thinking.

As can be seen, the price we pay for the implementation of these technologies is high. It is hard to understand, therefore, the almost idolatrous enthusiasm with which governments, companies and educational systems advocate the complete digitization of learning processes. One of E-Read's researchers, Theresa Schilhab, questioned seven-year-old Danish children at a school where iPads have displaced books. To her surprise, many told her that one of their favorite leisure activities was going to bookstores to look at and touch paper books: they loved the feel of them in their hands. They said it made it easier to choose the book and to read it: just open the copy, no need to turn on devices and press buttons. As on so many occasions, wisdom speaks through the mouths of children.

While E-Read studies reading, Harvard psychologists focus on writing, and their conclusion is no less surprising: taking notes by hand is much more effective than doing it with laptops or mobile devices. The pencil forces us to think in order to synthesize, which facilitates assimilation. The keyboard, on the other hand, is pressed without thinking.

The e-book had a meteoric launch, so that we old readers seemed to be an endangered species. The waters are calming down, and the spread of the e-book has stagnated. It looks like we have Gutenberg for a while. Fortunately.