Why Silent Reading Is the New Normal?

In the past, only people who could read were very specialised people called scribes. These days literacy is so high because we've sorted it out. We've democratised education, and so everyone learns to read. So reading has become democratised. It's not just the preserve of very specialise people in society who have that job but everyone can do it. In his book on ancient literacy, reading and writing in Babylon, the French as seriologist Dominique Sharpan quotes a letter by a scribe called Hulallam that hints at silent reading in a hurry. He switched between seeing, meaning silent reading and saying or listening that's loud reading, depending on the situation.