James Sosnoski: "Hyper-readers and their Reading Engines"
(11)
| "We cannot operate on the conventions that governed the reading practices of previous generations." (164) |
James Sosnoski argues for a definitional shift in reading and reading practices. Although it is often taken for granted, a majority of reading occurs in a computer-mediated setting, whether via word processors or the Internet. Hypertextual reading practices are studied, but other types of online reading which are unstructured and not controlled by a designer have not yet been theorized. Hyper-reading occurs when an online search is submitted and the reader/writer must wade through a large amount of information in order to find what is actually useful. Readers/writers must draw their own conclusions about relationships among the information and if/how it applies to their needs. Sosnoski argues that “constructive hyper-reading (reader-directed, screen-based, computer-assisted reading) has a higher degree of selectivity than the print based, un-assisted reading we do away from our terminals” (167).
In order to encourage the incorporation of hyper-reading into both our practice and our theory, Sosnoski delineates several characteristics of hyper-reading, which include:
- Filtering: The reader has an individual focus/goal based on key words or other selection criteria.
- Skimming: Web-documents are meant for people with too much information to skim, much like a proposal or prospectus.
- Pecking: The text is given coherence by the readers who combines the fragmentary text into something useful to their goal.
- Imposing: “Hyper-readers impose their frameworks on the texts they peruse. . . . The information available on the Web holds little significance until hyper-readers search it for items relevant to their inquiries” (169).
- Filming: “Graphics often play a more meaningful role than words” (169).
- Trespassing: “Hyper-readers are textual burglars. They break into electronic texts and once they have found the source codes hidden from sight, steal them away with their cut&paste tools and reassemble them” (170).
- De-authorizing: “By virtually reassembling texts, they dismiss the authors’ intentions by replacing them with their own, thus de-authorizing texts altogether” (170).
- Fragmenting: Fragmented texts are preferred over linear ones, making organization up to the individuals’ needs/purposes.
|
1 2 3 4 5 6 |
7 8 9 10 11 12 |
13 14 15 16 17 18 |
19 20 21 22 23 |
Contents |
