Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

How the Internet Changed the Way We Read (dailydot.com)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the read-just-enough-to-get-angry-and-then-rush-to-comment dept.

An anonymous reader writes: UC Literature Professor Jackson Bliss puts into words something many of you have probably experienced: the evolution of the internet and mobile devices has changed how we read. "The truth is that most of us read continuously in a perpetual stream of incestuous words, but instead of reading novels, book reviews, or newspapers like we used to in the ancien régime, we now read text messages, social media, and bite-sized entries about our protean cultural history on Wikipedia."

Bliss continues, "In the great epistemic galaxy of words, we have become both reading junkies and also professional text skimmers. ... Reading has become a relentless exercise in self-validation, which is why we get impatient when writers don't come out and simply tell us what they're arguing. ... Content—whether thought-provoking, regurgitated, or analytically superficial, impeccably-researched, politically doctrinaire, or grammatically atrocious—now occupies the same cultural space, the same screen space, and the same mental space in the public imagination. After awhile, we just stop keeping track of what's legitimately good because it takes too much energy to separate the crème from the foam."

7 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. Obligatory by pushing-robot · · Score: 5, Funny

    tl;dr

    --
    How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
  2. Not gonna read this by russotto · · Score: 5, Informative

    With that much excessively verbose pomposity in the summary, the article must be insufferable.

    1. Re:Not gonna read this by binarylarry · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yeah, just checkout this introductory paragraph:

      Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
      Thy micturations are to me,
      As plurdled gabbleblotchits,
      On a lurgid bee,
      That mordiously hath blurted out,
      Its earted jurtles,
      Into a rancid festering confectious organ squealer.

      --
      Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
    2. Re:Not gonna read this by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Give him a break, he's a Literary professor. Words are his life...

      Even allowing for that - when someone uses a phrase as ridiculous as "incestuous words", it serves as a warning flag telling me they almost certainly don't have anything to offer beyond pomposity.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    3. Re:Not gonna read this by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      UCI - My school!

      Okay, Dr. Bliss needs to have a thesaurus removed from his colon, wherein it was undoubtedly placed by some angry freshman, but the point is an interesting one. Back in the nineteen hundreds, when to access information we needed to leave home and drive to a public building called a "library" and carefully select printed works of interest, we absorbed information only when we specifically intended to. The mechanics of this process forced us to remember specific authors and publications as being our sources. And the distribution paradigm was always one-to-many, information flowing from authors through their august gatekeeping Publishers to the plebeian eye.

      Today, it's raining 'content'. The lordly Publisher, and his retinue of pimply-faced grad students who made sure that only approved Major Authors made it past the slush pile, is all but gone. Because we can search effortlessly in a world of diverse data, we no longer have to depend on a few authors we trust to define the culture we live in. And furthermore, we can now talk back. One-to-many distribution has become the shrieking of many-to-many. This confuses quite a few of us.

  3. Why your article won't be read by Cowclops · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm not even making a slashdot-type "nobody reads the article" joke here - literally no one anywhere is going to read the article when you use high-level SAT words and phrases like:

    incestuous words
    regime (not referring to a country's leadership)
    protean
    epistemic
    doctrinaire

    If its supposed to be ironic, I get it, but if its not then you failed miserably and don't even understand your own ideas.

    I think its good to have as big of a vocabulary as possible and I actually recognize most of these words or could figure it out from contrast, and I consider myself to have a fairly above-average vocab due to having an English teacher for a Mom, but repeatedly using "big" words like those is just a shortcut to letting us know you're an asshole without much to say.

    tldr version:
    tldr.

  4. Re:A glut of information, a lack of attention span by khasim · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I disagree. I don't think it is the attention span. I skip reading things if the author has not clearly stated his/her point within the first 3 paragraphs.

    From the summary:

    The truth is that most of us read continuously in a perpetual stream of incestuous words, but instead of reading novels, book reviews, or newspapers like we used to in the ancien régime, we now read text messages, social media, and bite-sized entries about our protean cultural history on Wikipedia.

    What does the phrase "incestuous words" mean?

    Why is "continuously" used in the same sentence with "perpetual"?

    How is "cultural history" associated with "protean"?

    The problem isn't the attention span. The problem is trying to figure out what someone is really saying. Electrons are cheaper than ink. That does not mean it is acceptable to pack in the adjectives and adverbs just because you don't have to pay a printer.