Skip to main content

Ruben Van Havermaet's Library tagged hypertext →  View Popular

11 Oct 08

Online Literacy Is a Lesser Kind

The author is trying to point out that reading the quick paced information on the internet is pushing away our (youth's) ability to perform "slow reading". Some interesting points but i don't agree with his automatic assumption (for which no arguments are provided) that reading dense texts is superior to reading newer forms of representing information (hypertext).

chronicle.com/...04b01001.htm - Preview

reading education usability literacy hci newmedia hypertext

  • "After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none."
    • maybe this also depends on how you measure student achievement. changing the tools with which you conceptualize the world is bound to change the meaning of what we regard as achievements. - on 2008-10-11
    Add Sticky Note
  • That's the drift of screen reading. Yes, it's a kind of literacy, but it breaks down in the face of a dense argument, a Modernist poem, a long political tract, and other texts that require steady focus and linear attention — in a word, slow reading. Fast scanning doesn't foster flexible minds that can adapt to all kinds of texts, and it doesn't translate into academic reading.
    • Although i would also regret the decline of slow reading, i think this picture is not complete without making a distinction here between the different tools/media that generate "texts".

      Maybe these new tools (computers, internet, ...) are not the best media for the dense texts generated by the "older" media. There are ways of representing information that more easily allow for "fast-scanning" (mind-mapping sofware like compendium and freemind), in fact pushing the hypertext idea to the extreme.

      Because the internet today is imho still not using the original hypertext idea to its full potential (see Engelbart's "Augmenting Human Intellect). Basically, it's just old media (webPAGEs) linked together. See Lev Manovich for an interesting discussion on what we today call "new media" (The Language of New Media).       - on 2008-10-11
    Add Sticky Note
21 Jul 08

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

  • information is a kind of commodity, a utilitarian resource that can be mined and processed with industrial efficiency. The more pieces of information we can “access” and the faster we can extract their gist, the more productive we become as thinkers
    • For those who still read books, this reminds me somewhat of Jean Baudrillard's 'The Ecstasy of Communication':
      "Obscenity begins when there's no more spectacle, no more stage, no more theatre, no more illusions, when everything becomes immediately transparant, visible, exposed in the raw and inexorable light of information and communication. We no longer partake of the drama of alienation, but are in the ecstasy of communication."       - on 2008-07-21
    Add Sticky Note
1 - 5 of 5
Showing 20▼ items per page

Selected Tags

Related Tags

Sponsored Links

Ads by Google

Highlighter, Sticky notes, Tagging, Groups and Network: integrated suite dramatically boosting research productivity. Learn more »

Join Diigo