ABSTRACT
This chapter describes that the challenge of modern text technologies is continuous with the reading challenge of the past, and that these technologies also present opportunities. It also describes that research is crucial in determining the best ways of exploiting the opportunities. Everything that makes reading difficult for some readers makes it more challenging in linked multimedia formats. Speaking and listening are universal acquisitions, which everyone in a social environment who is not disabled masters at roughly the same pace and to a similar level, but writing and reading are "unnatural acts" that are acquired unevenly, uncertainly, and with variability of outcome. In summary then, if the 'new reading' requires deliberate instruction to realize the full benefits of text technologies and avoid the pitfalls suggested by DeStefano L. and Lefevre J. then this should be no surprise since the old reading required it, too.
