In this week's reading, I was pleased to find a few observations I had made earlier in the semester made their way into the articles by Sosnoski and Jackobs. My observations were not so deeply analyzed, and these articles only brought up more questions to be answered.
I enjoyed reading Sosnoski's breaking down of how one reads and utilizes a text. This is italicized because the word text in this case is so open-ended (as it has been in pretty much every discussion we've had in this class). Sosnoski does little to help me differentiate actual from fraudulent text, but touches on a number a points I both agree and disagree with. I like how he described his use of a scanning application that allowed him to find exactly what he needed for a particular set of research and writing. Personally, I do not use much other than google, jstor and some other databases for my online research needs, but Sosnoski's inclusion of these utilities in the writing process was crucial. As a full-time student and full-time employee, I do not have the time to sift through a pile of old periodicals or other publications. These filtering applications allow me to get what I need, when I need it without wasting any time reading through something that has no bearing on just what it is I am researching. I suspect I will not be afforded this time once I have a position in the professional or even creative writing world. I understand there are positives to reading any text--regardless of its effect on personal research--but we do not live in a world where endless time is given to accommodate this attitude.
I also liked Sosnoski's comparison of skimming to pecking. Skimming is a requirement in higher education, unless of course a student has only a few classes or no job. I believe it does require a certain amount of training, never provided by any academic institution I've ever been a member of. Skimming is necessary, whereas pecking is just lazy. I think that a lot of educators--especially in high schools--treat skimming and pecking as if they were one in the same. Students need to be prepared to not be able to read every word of a massive amount of text once they are in higher levels of education and the real world.
I was hoping there was a term for what Sosnoski described as "de-authorizing." This was a question I had in the beginning of the semester when we were discussion intellectual property. Students will reference in-text quotations from authors other than that of the article itself, but not give them the proper credit. What's to say these authors' didn't do the same in composing their articles? It seems like it's all such a conspiracy, but these are motivated issues within the world of original authorship and beg to be addressed.
I was not really sold on his inclusion of the filming and trespassing sections. I felt while they had relevance, they were a bit out of place for what the rest of the article was trying to emphasize.
Jackobs article was an interesting way to look at how even the world wide web--one of the newest forms of text, writing and communication--can be broken down. This distinguishes what different digital modes exist and for what purposes they are used. It makes me wonder what will follow what forms of communication are readily available right now--e-mail, texting, video chat, blogging, even shared editing privileges on online databases. There really is no limit what these can and will develop into.
The following article ties Jackobs and Sosnoski's articles well with the idea that there is a medium for the written word and its electronic delivery. These do not have exclusive duties, but blend in order to tap into more of the human senses--in the case of this article, primarily the visual aspect (which I thought was appropriate for this course).
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3594188.pdf?&acceptTC=true&jpdConfirm=true
Yeah, I found Jakobs article interesting in a kind of far off perspective. I would never read something like this for fun but it is interesting to see how the different pages use the different aspects of rhetoric to influence us. It seems so common sense and we are affected by a web page's rhetoric every day, but it is all unconsciously. When Jakobs deconstructed these pages, it was interesting to see what roles certain pages filled in our complete picture of literacy and meaning.
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting point she made was the difference in pages from China to the United States. With Chinese pages being stuffed full of information, limited white space and such, according to the "principle of fullness." I have this conception that western rhetoric is the only way, there is no escaping it in the function of society and the framing of any problem that we have, but then we go over to China and they see rhetoric in a completely different light! It is amazing to me still that there is no universal way of rhetoric that all languages are framed by.
I also thought that the notion of the infitine scroller on such sites like Instragram and Facebook deserved some attention. Jakobs talks about the danger of losing the user and them clicking further, but with this new infinite scroll, that is no longer a concern, and I find myself scrolling for much longer than I would have if I had to actually click a button and refresh a page. It's kinda pathetic when I look at it like that..
On a side note my email, yahoo, just started using the infinite scroller and I can't stand it. This kinda goes back to the websites knowing their function as problem solving means and yahoo email is just retarded. Email is not meant to be perused over, looking over old emails, and reflecting on ol good times me and my penpals have had. It's not a freaking social tool. It is a database damnit. Give me back my freaking search engine, so I can look up emails and get rid of the stupid scroller.