Jan Swafford argues that we read differently on paper and offers experience with students editing their writing on paper. As the article of his paper states he is arguing "why e-books will never replace real books." I wonder though if advances in touch screens will change this.
Ever since realizing that our cat appears to understand that I interact with an iPad but he seems to have no clue that I'm moving a cursor on the desktop with a mouse, I've wondered if touch screen is significant. Hearing stories of children that take more readily to iPad than desktops furthers this. Maybe what is really significant is that we now have a combination of touch screen and gesture based interfaces that is subtly revolutionary. "Subtly" because it may be the kind of revolution we only notice in retrospect.
The revolution will come when we are able to edit text with sweeps of the fingers and gestures that seem to hold the text itself it will be more visceral than using a pen or pencil. Currently the experience of writing on paper is more directly connected to the words and letters than typing on a keyboard that makes characters appear elsewhere on a screen. However with advances in gesture input and touch screens (or possibly motion sensors) may bring us an experience that is even more connected to the experience of bring words to the page/screen.
By-the-way, I find the cartoon from Swafford's article funny, so I had to include it.
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