We are moving from what Birkerts calls “vertical” reading: deep, devotional, recursive engagement with a single text, toward “horizontal” reading: skimming, browsing, grazing across sources, surfaces, and screens.

What we are seeing is not less exposure to text, but a fundamental shift in the nature of that exposure. The immersive arc of narrative is giving way to the skimmable feed. Syntax shortens, attention fractures, the very architecture of thought begins to mimic the medium.