An active reader asks questions, considers alternatives, questions assumptions, and even questions the trustworthiness of the author. An active reader tries to generalize specific examples, and devise specific examples for generalities. An active reader doesn't passively sponge up information, but uses the author's argument as a springboard for critical thought and deep understanding.
Konrad Hinsen's blog
A much cited essay by Bret Victor, "Explorable Explanations", argues for supporting and encouraging active reading in communicating ideas. Explanatory text should thus be complemented by interactive visualizations and computational demonstrations, allowing the reader to actively engage with the ideas. If you haven't read Victor's essay yet, please do so now, and then come back here. It's not very long. What I am going to discuss is a variation on Victor's proposal, and I won't repeat his well-presented arguments.
Nutshell: make expandable, embeddable explanations
a tool to let your readers dive into details
papers
Every paper the course has read, with everything the class wrote about it. Active AI Reading: a course where students read AI papers actively and publish summaries, critiques, figures and code.
The revolt of the reader | The Observation Deck
Reading is important to me. While I’m not a quick reader nor an especially voracious one, I have found that long-form reading has had a profound influence on me over my life. And because reading is important to me, writing is too: writing not only allows us to convey our ideas, but the very act forces us to test and distill them — at once making our ideas more robust while providing the vehicle by which to share them.
Creative Reading: Scaffolding Reading for Transformation
However, recent work on augmenting reading largely focuses on making reading more efficient, especially in knowledge-intensive contexts where people must rapidly make sense of research papers and other complex documents (Lo et al., 2024). These systems often aim to help readers skim, summarize, and synthesize large volumes of information in order to reduce cognitive effort and accelerate document- and corpus-level sensemaking at scale (Gu et al., 2025; Lo et al., 2024; Fok et al., 2023). At one extreme, the form of reading implicitly envisioned by these systems may resemble what we call “reading to discard”: extracting the essential, actionable informational core of a document as quickly and efficiently as possible, so that the rest can be swiftly tossed aside—much like we often process inbound mail. This motivates us to ask what scaffolding approaches might resist “reading to discard,” what alternative forms of reading we might scaffold, and what alternative views and values of reading might guide the conversation.
Reader: Frequently Asked Questions
Pro Tip: Use Ghostreader on this doc 👻 One of the coolest features of Reader is an AI reading assistant called Ghostreader. Ghostreader enables you to define terms, look up encyclopedia entries, simplify complex language, and much more, but one of its most powerful functions is asking a document a question.
Automatic Against the People: Reading, Writing, and AI
Reader guide · Standard Reader
How to use Standard Reader — following, reading, listening, and making it yours. No technical knowledge needed.
Creative Reading: Scaffolding Reading for Transformation
Reading augmentation systems increasingly help readers process text at scale. While these tools address real constraints of time and cognitive load, they often implicitly frame reading as information transmission, or "reading to discard," delegating interpretation and effort to the machine. Yet this delegation changes the outcome of reading. For example, in scholarly reading, deciding what a research text implies and why it matters is central to the work of scholarly production. We propose creative reading as an alternative goal: reading augmentation that supports readers in creating both readings and themselves as readers. By putting literary and narrative theories into conversation with scholarly sensemaking and creativity support, we present a provocation-oriented design space for valuing the process of reading as a way of preserving a plurality of readings and transforming readers over time.
Creative Reading: Scaffolding Reading for Transformation
Reading augmentation systems increasingly help readers process text at scale. While these tools address real constraints of time and cognitive load, they often implicitly frame reading as information transmission, or "reading to discard," delegating interpretation and effort to the machine. Yet this delegation changes the outcome of reading. For example, in scholarly reading, deciding what a research text implies and why it matters is central to the work of scholarly production. We propose creative reading as an alternative goal: reading augmentation that supports readers in creating both readings and themselves as readers. By putting literary and narrative theories into conversation with scholarly sensemaking and creativity support, we present a provocation-oriented design space for valuing the process of reading as a way of preserving a plurality of readings and transforming readers over time.
Creative Reading: Scaffolding Reading for Transformation
Reading augmentation systems increasingly help readers process text at scale. While these tools address real constraints of time and cognitive load, they often implicitly frame reading as...
Connecting with your readers on Semble [Patterns of Sensemaking #2] - Cosmik Labs
On how the references you make help your writing find its natural audience
The Published Voice: Whose Voice Are We Really Reading? - The Scholarly Kitchen
What happens then to “author voice,” which has always been an important consideration to authors and reviewers alike, if AI is helping researchers with their writing?
7 Reasons Why Standard Reader Is My Choice
Looking for the best way to read ATmosphere blogs? Here are 7 personal reasons why Standard Reader has become my go-to choice for long-form content.