blog's article entitled Electronic Literature Nietzsche changed, would it change us? , Juan José Díez echoes an article by Nicholas Carr published in The Atlantic in which the author shows his bewilderment at the decentralized reading the faces to read a book or an article, and blames the use of the network, which creates an internal struggle for a mind tending to wander in the immediacy and multiplicity of information that provides the display, which is then serious difficulties to find their way, it basically loses the thread continuously and ultimately, precludes them from reading in depth.
True to the name of this blog, I would do some thinking on this thread missed reading it creates, especially those that are not digital natives, the legitimate uncertainty about whether it will exhaust the possibility of extensive and thorough reading of the text. Carr dissects himself very well the role that some older technologies have led to the thinking of our activity in our lives (as the mechanical clock, we adjust some natural activities for submitting them to a mathematical programming). The transition to writing, as he remembered Socrates in Phaedrus, would lose the true wisdom, and let our mind knowledge dead in a foreign material and foreign to our mental operations. Carr acknowledges that Socrates could not see the virtues of writing, despite having good reasons, and perhaps he should have that problem with reading hypermedia. The article is not trivial, because ultimately asked by the systematization of information that Google aspires after the steps of generating a powerful artificial intelligence, in which the system can with the individual.
course, the constant recurrence of this system immediately and ubiquitous search is focusing information and research activity of half of humanity, and the multiplicity of links between themselves that offers multiple results seem to create a super gibberish at all distracting of all, because there is a constant center, but a constant re-centering each new piece of information. In a way, if you steal the anxiety that produces a traditional reader who seeks to follow a particular thread and yet trapped by a network of fascinating and never seen suggestions, I have never seen the idea of \u200b\u200bcontemplation in such an absolute singular. And I know the meaning of "consider" means "get attention" on something. But what we care when this is so intense because the object is constantly changing?
The recent PBS documentary Digital Nation, we propose, first, that children overestimate Stanford multitasking efficiency, efficiency that does not corroborate the results of concentration made to them. Moreover, brain scan at UCLA showed greater involvement of brain areas to surf the internet-Google-, compared to the traditional reading activity, which activates fewer areas. Especially, navigation catapult decision areas that are normally associated with the exercise of intelligence. Of course, increased use does not involve brain more attention to an object, but it does indicate a greater associational activity (but this decision is consistent enough, in-formed?). The documentary also said that children only read summaries of the books (I think that is pre-digital activity, I fear) and, of particular interest is the detection, by their teachers, that the tests are written by a fragmented because of its many tasks, much like backsliding at the same point in each paragraph. We still have a lot of confusion on the interpretation of these effects.
Without doubt, the statement cited by Maryann Wolf-Carr, we are not only what we read, but the way we read, it seems crux of the issue in this plot. Like Nietzsche with his late typewriter, which led to a telegraphic form and aphoristic writing, hypermedia leads us to another way of writing, of expressing and thus, thinking. All rhetoric is a communicative technique and a technique must be learned and grasped for it to work properly. Both native and non-digital natives produced the difficulty of addressing a communication technique different from the apprehended (the first was bored one long text of Tolstoy, the second contrast overwhelmed this amazing experience with the fragmentation and division of the text in radio spots de-spun). Perhaps the way we read it distracts us from what we are.
However, we think the reader distraction (in the sense of reading a novel in fragments, for example) is no stranger to the reading experience itself. Any traditional reader will recognize that unless pleasant exceptions, often had to read a book without doing so at a stretch. Furthermore, between one chapter and another may have been due to go to work, helping children, talk to your partner, hanging out with friends, do laundry, cook, fix some issues, and what else. Is not life a real distraction from reading? Do we kick it deep in reading? The nun Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz decided to enter the convent to read and write, and still complained of a lack of focus and continuity due to the monastic tasks and the arrival of their mates for the time off that she devoted to the study.
Nor is there much doubt where gamers spend hours immersed in the game experience, or when we watch a movie, there is no distraction except as mentioned. What happens to the reading, then? Literature, like news or movies or games, have their places. Have you been to the codex to do anything. And is there for many yet. But literature does not stop to find their place in this frenzy of digitization. A recent article a blog shows that attempts to publish books with videos and blogs (the Vook ) is rather a question of market improvement or enrichment in reading, and the author decides to keep the book ( the book ), because who cares to read, not like you stop watching a video on the matter, what matters is the reading of the book itself, which a traditional book, or in default thereof e-book device is right now (albeit with lower prices per share).
It is true that I believe, have issues Vook superfluous. Walking the other day for some previews of the classics that have for web (the iPad version seems more orderly and coherent), there is the option of viewing the same page a video and text, and even the text on video , which is no longer an exercise in multitasking, is a superposition impossible readings (film with someone talking about the book, and a text typeface to decipher). Of course, there is the option of viewing only text, but then I do not see any interest in the rich edit. It is also possible to keep the video clips and ignore the text. There is a clear objective editorial, a coherent integration of materials, and links added to the text, except some really relevant, leading to a dictionary page and others external to the editorial which explains the word bound, within a very random, and sloppy from editorial point of view and digital, as there are now ways to insert text dictionaries for all of them without going through links that will enrich your reading in a multimedia and relevant. Thus, any lost the thread of a reading, bad severed its purpose.
certainly what is needed is a consistency to it all. That hypertext can be infinite, like a Borges story (which ironically is shielded themselves behind mirrors and mazes of words and images that manufactured and with which readers wonderfully tangled), is an idea that only makes sense if we understand it as an opportunity to organize a pleasure and need at the same time, not as an invitation to madness and dyspraxia content. How could I not jump from one thing to another, sometimes without rhyme or reason, now if Google launches suggestions, flashes, almost avant-garde had algorithmically fragments connecting partners and other times completely decoupled for the pleasure of our curiosity ? Say this is a part of the reading, the surface, that frightens us because we mistake for another parallel approach that allows hypermedia: superficial reading that took place as an interactive experience, as performance or happening on the screen, requires a response, an attitude, an action, such as sharing in a social network comment on another network, computer on a digital dating own, responding in a blog. This requires knowing where you have read that passage, with whom and what I associate, where they classify, and who want to confront. I think this activity, with its decision-making can settle in a continuous process, these readings fragmented, and since then proceeds to depth knowledge. But this is not possible if we confuse readings searches, but apparently occur simultaneously. Actually, maybe that is what distracts us. Therefore I also think that the visits, the route taken, it can be anyone, and that's where multitasking and its negative effects to date can be mitigated, because attention is now able to dive into a specific objective in a way which, with its richness and variety of immediacy never seen before, the brain learns to discern, to park, to relegate relevant information but not urgent, and to collect in the way that you're really interested. Following the thread. This allows management work al mismo tiempo diferentes recorridos para diferentes lectores, pero para todos una lectura concentrada. Y la fragmentación no importará si las conexiones se eligen sin perder el hilo, es más, siguiendo varios hilos incluso, pero atentos a lo que hacemos. Es, simplemente, convertirse en un Ulises que no sólo no se deja llevar por el canto de sirenas, sino que además es capaz de aprehender sus cantos. Pero ser un héroe resulta difícil. Desde luego necesitamos desarrollar y ejercitar técnicas para aprender a leer así, y las propias búsquedas, etiquetaciones, enlaces, deben ir mejorando: es un problema, por curioso que parezca, de usabilidad. El libro no nos distrae porque conocemos su técnica de lectura y porque its layout and design help from getting lost once known technique. But remember the video medieval monk who can not drive either a manuscript and its mechanism of access to reading. Is more concerned about how to access information on what can be learned in the book.
In short, the problem of textual fragmentation and lack of concentration along with a deeper reading could be raised and, to my mind:
- We apprehend a hypermedia reading with a reading technique that helps us because it is for other support and rhetoric, and that confuses and distracts us. We do not read as we are. We need then
- hypermedia technique precisely hile reading the fragments and bring us what we want to read, not what tempts us without the design made by Google so far.
- Thus we can define places, spaces according to the literature, which is both enjoyable and enriching the (experience) reading of a nineteenth-century novel, say, without fragmentation and hypermedia possibilities attached to it involving necessarily an interruption, a distraction almost random. There will be a linear reading of the novel, but it will be immersive reading and consistent, and use its text, at the same time rich in connections, involvement of readers, etc. And of course, given the option (but not as frantic flight forward, and now are searching the net) to leave or quit, or reading only part of the story (I think that missing page has always been allowed .)
- Only after this wild randomness as suggestive as disparate links, which allow us access to the surface of many other unforeseen relationships or documents to be discovered, have a greater sense, and can complement a surprising and brilliant our reading, now, deep.
length This article will be deleted at this point to those readers who have lost their power of concentration on both continuous paragraph, and although I removed some links to help and have left others to see if just reading Plato
orBorges
instead of me, also serves to give the reader a taste traditional contemplative, and show that despite all learned to leave aside my sources and came up here, but has scored and even visited several items of interest or even been inserted in the reading. The important thing is that the reader wanted to get on your way to this place text (perhaps even skipping paragraphs.) Anyway, without being this means a really organized text model as I propose, it is concentrated reading that would occur if we formed not unnecessarily distracting links, if we knew that some links are sources and other extensions, if we recognize that will get an order to review each other at various times, associated with this interest in discovering the secret of fragmented and digital concentration: therein lies the true multi-tasking focus. Many good blogs and surf at the balance and found themselves a port, a place for small trials hypermedia concise deep, well-informed and beautifully enriched with relevant links and surprising. If multitasking young people are educated to reach by twenty consultations about a specific material, they themselves will find the other threads to develop in their heads a new birth of communication. May feel the tapestry created by an author and even more complex tapestry that barely perceive today.
After all this, perhaps even happens to the reader as a friend of Nicholas Carr, who says he is no longer able to read
War and Peace
because he has lost that capacity. He actually has not lost a building, has lost a skill, the technique of reading and access to knowledge has been replaced by another. The issue is that while we may choose to educate traditional reading digital natives or give us tantalizing sirens of the network, the other option, you need to research and practice with some seriousness and intellectual and creative challenge, means that there is not a model or tool
ad hoc
-hiperedición a way, a place for fiction print-de
War and Peace
to respond to the new technique of reading in which we are all falling in awe, pleasure, terror, surprise and much forgetfulness.