This article considers the transformation of reading, which has taken place as a result of the spread of the digital media, particularly the World Wide Web. Reading has assumed a completely different attitude towards writing, which, influenced by the interactive nature of the new media, has been put on a stronger basis. The article traces the transformation of the prerequisites of reading both using texts which employ the potential of digital media for literary experiments and the Web publication platforms, which see the Internet as a radically democratic medium for the publication of texts. In addition to these fundamental differences, both activities share three consequences in the transformation of reading: the boundary between reading and writing is being blurred; the placement of the text into a space modelled on the principles of Web design is changing the technological conditions of reading it; the advent of a new way of contextualizing a digital text placed on the Web and linked by hypertext with an almost infinite quantity of other texts (the author proposes the term virtual codex).