Deep Reading and Responsible Communication (or, Wendy pulled a Stoopid)
when was the last time you read an article online? now when was the last time you read a FULL article online, without skimming?
reading this post should take you about 3 minutes. if you read this entire post you will have spent approx as much time reading as most people read in an entire day. that is, if you consider reading to be moving your eyes over every word on the screen, absorbing their meaning, finishing the post, and considering the entire piece as a complete thought.
i, it seems, have become most people.
a couple days ago, i posted an article about storytelling and the elections. about the storybook narratives constructed for obama and mccain, and the role of story in politics and our decision making. i found a link to the article on a newsfeed. the title line sounded interesting, i clicked on it, read the first few paragraphs in full, then skimmed the rest of the piece for theme. the content seemed relevant to what we do here at underground, seemed like something that visitors to our site would find interesting, and so, i posted (see post below).
yesterday, it was brought to my attention that this post was not all-together, shall we say, undergroundish. the author was, shall we say, not a believer. and i felt, shall we say, stupid.
no big deal. this happens all the time. (misposting, buddy. not me feeling stupid.)
but i was shocked that it happened to me.
i shouldn’t be.
i read this article in the same fashion so many of us now read: lightly. and then i did what so many of us now do when we see something that we think might be of interest to someone we know: forward it on. usually without much consideration of the content of our communication. in the verbal world, this would be the equivalent of repeating a joke you overheard on a street corner (but never thought about its meaning) because you saw some stranger laugh at it. not the best analogue, but you get my drift. it’s dangerous to say the least.
an article came out in the atlantic monthly a few weeks ago on this very topic: what effect is the internet having on the way we read? i have pasted link to it below. the implications of the internets effect on our reading and thinking go beyond mispostings like mine, and into the way we use the internet for communication at Underground, and perhaps suggests that we might want to be a bit more considered not only in the DEPTH of our reading, but also in the form and frequency.
i am pleased to say that when it came out, i read the Whole Thing from beginning to end. and in magazine form. (that paper thing with staples in the middle one can carry in a shoulder bag.) and when i passed it on to friends, i received comments that the article was great, but it was a challenge getting all the way through. not because it was not a well written piece. it is. but because it was the first time they realized they had not read an article in full in years.
give it a try:
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
What the Internet is doing to our brains
BY NICHOLAS CARR
July 14th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Paul Virilio has written that every technological innovation contains within it the potential for its own unique kind of accident. For example, when the airplane was invented, the airplane accident came into being. I don’t believe that we have witnessed the kind of accident unique to the internet, or its widespread use. The tactics of distraction and the increase of speed of information have changed the ways that we read to a certain extent. However, distraction and speed have been with us for long time (e.g. in advertising, propaganda, war, etc.).
The question I would ask is what harm will come to information, and the users of information, if information always constitutes a commodity? What are the effects of the commodification of information? For example, this screen on which I am writing is informing me that the word ‘commodification’ is not spelled correctly. In other words, the ‘machine’ is attempting to tell me that it ‘knows’ something about this word that I don’t. That constitutes one of the dangers of the new technology, I suppose, one of its accidental properties. Especially, if we refuse to cultivate our curiosity and our capacity to question.