re: General Reading Question

Sally, all of the definitions you just linked however involve either the term reading (something that is happening), in which one person/thing is doing the reading, and everyone else is just listening (or reading the reading in the case of the computer or the measuring devices), or the verb read, where someone is either reading directly or using visual clues to make a determination. To read something in and of itself in those definitions involves using your eyes to look at a book (or fingers in the case of the blind) or study a person.

In the end, a person who is completely illiterate and incapable of reading at all can still listen to an audiobook, which to me nullifies it as a form of reading.

Reading a play is completely different from hearing it performed. The same goes for hearing a poem read aloud. I'd say hearing it would arguably be the superior way to experience it, but you yourself aren't reading it.

We are all being wonderfully pedantic here I suppose.

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Listening to audiobooks may not be reading but it is “consuming literature.” 

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Without a doubt, as I said in one of my previous posts in this thread, it's a fine way to consume/interact with books. I don't listen to them myself, but it's more of a me problem. The narration is too slow for me compared to my reading speed, so I wind up tuning them out. I'm not ADHD, but I might as well be when it comes to audiobooks. I can definitely see the appeal for anyone who travels a lot for work or has a long commute.

Well your various voice command programs are reading audio inputs and interpreting them so I'd argue that if a person is hearing and interpreting audio inputs - it can be called reading in a technical manner based on one of the many ways that word is used in practice.



ETA: we have also come to a clear impasse in the discussion and can probably move on at this point.

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Physical book. I stare at a computer screen 8+ hours a day. I don't want to do that during my down time.

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Same.