The Experiential Turn in Digital-Intelligent Reading: Risk Mechanisms and Pathways to Sustainability

Against the backdrop of rapid advances in digital-intelligent reading technologies, reading practices are shifting from text-centered cognition to experience-oriented interaction. Contemporary digital-intelligent reading increasingly exhibits characteristics such as interface mediation, algorithmic recommendation, fragmented temporal structures, and multimodal sensory integration, thereby reshaping how readers engage with cultural content. Rather than a technological upgrade of conventional reading, digital-intelligent reading has evolved into a sociotechnical environment in which reading behaviors, cognitive processes, and cultural participation are continuously reorganized through the interaction between digital platforms, intelligent algorithms, and users. This transformation has attracted growing scholarly attention because it changes not only how information is accessed but also the values, habits, and social functions of reading. This paper examines the emerging "experiential turn" in digital-intelligent reading and explores its underlying mechanisms, associated risks, and possible sustainable development paths. The study investigates how technological infrastructures reconstruct reading experiences under the logic of platformization and algorithmic governance. It argues that the experiential turn marks a reorganization of reading around technological systems rather than around texts themselves. The paper identifies four major dimensions of this experiential transformation. First, at the level of interface mechanisms, reading has shifted from a text-carrier-based activity toward an operational and interactive experience shaped by digital interfaces, turning readers from passive receivers into active system operators. Second, algorithmic recommendation systems have altered traditional content-distribution logic, transforming reading from autonomous selection into algorithm-guided navigation, with platforms assuming the "gatekeeping" role. Third, fragmented temporal structures enabled by mobile media and real-time feedback mechanisms have accelerated the transition from continuous deep immersion to intermittent information consumption. Fourth, multimodal technologies have reconstructed readers' sensory participation, compensating for the perceptual limitations of print media and strengthening the embodied sense of presence. While these transformations enhance accessibility, convenience, and user engagement, they also introduce substantive risks. The paper argues that digital-intelligent reading tends to prioritize immediacy and stimulation, often at the expense of the systematicity and coherence of knowledge. Algorithm-driven distribution may intensify echo chambers, weaken readers' autonomy, and reduce opportunities for exposure to diverse viewpoints. Fragmented, stimulus-oriented reading habits also risk undermining deep cognition and reflective thinking. Furthermore, the combination of algorithmic personalization and interactive online communities may reinforce homogeneous discourse environments, thereby exacerbating social polarization and weakening the foundations of public rationality. In response to these challenges, the paper proposes a sustainable development framework for digital-intelligent reading. The framework emphasizes balancing experiential value against cognitive value, strengthening readers' digital literacy and reflective capacity, improving algorithmic transparency and platform responsibility, encouraging open communication and diverse consensus formation, and refining governance mechanisms and ethical standards for digital reading services. By examining the experiential turn from technological and cultural perspectives, this study clarifies the relationship between reading, technology, and society, and offers theoretical support for a more human-centered and sustainable digital reading ecology.