Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine, also has described how the Internet has altered his mental habits. “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print,” he wrote earlier this year. A pathologist who has long been on the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School, Friedman elaborated on his comment in a telephone conversation with me. His thinking, he said, has taken on a “staccato” quality, reflecting the way he quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online. “I can’t read War and Peace anymore,” he admitted. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”Reading online is different from reading print, think Jakob Nielsen's studies back in the 90s which showed that online readers scan. Then bring it up to date and apply it to "academic" readers as well as the metaphorical "ordinary user":
As part of the five-year research program, the scholars examined computer logs documenting the behavior of visitors to two popular research sites, one operated by the British Library and one by a U.K. educational consortium, that provide access to journal articles, e-books, and other sources of written information. They found that people using the sites exhibited “a form of skimming activity,” hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited. They typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book before they would “bounce” out to another site. Sometimes they’d save a long article, but there’s no evidence that they ever went back and actually read it.Factor in the fact that today we live online much more than we did then, and the result is obvious: "the Internet" is changing the way we think. Reducing our capacity to process lengthy complex writing. In short, making us stupid!
But, is different worse? The authors of the study mentioned above wrote:
It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.Carr's argument presupposes that "reading in the traditional sense" is both traditional and good. Yet for the purposes of the "readers" assessed by the study, academics researching prior literature on a topic, reading has perhaps never been the long drawn out sequential process Carr inagines. I have been trying to teach students "How to avoid reading books" for decades. Why? Because scanning not reading works, for researching prior literature scanning beats reading! As MarkG commented "
Reading differently is not necessarily reading worse.
Carr also argues that the structures and processes of the Internet shape and control how we think, claiming:
The idea that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines is not only built into the workings of the Internet, it is the network’s reigning business model as well. The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.In other words: reading differently is worse because we lose the capacity for sustained attention. This is like Socrates argument in Plato's Phaedrus that the new technology of alphabetic writing (to which ironically we owe our "memory" of Socrates) "will produce forgetfulness in those who have learned it. They will not need to exercise their memories, being able to rely on what is written."
So Carr is in fine company. Like Socrates he is correct, memory has been eroded by writing and the capacity for sequential sustained reading is being eroded by the Internet. Also, like Socrates, he is wrong, the human capacity for living is not eroded so easily and the new mental states are not (most of us believe - since few today voluntarily give up writing and advocate burning libraries to the ground) worse ;)
Google need not make you stoopid, but it is making us think differently, and that needs serious practice and study.
Labels: culture, internet, writing
¶ 8:17 AM
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Labels: study-skills, writing, zotero
¶ 6:00 AM
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By the way, for David (when he returns from lazing on the beach!) there is a mobile version, it is just over 1/2 the size of the WMV, but I'm showing the Flash version above (so Mac users can watch it ;-) which is 3x the size of the WMV or 6 times the 3GP...
What can I say to excuse this arrant sales pitch for Zotero? Well, it is Saturday, so I'm unwinding, or possibly coming undone ;-0
Labels: scholarship, study-skills, writing, zotero, zothelp
¶ 1:01 PM
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Nice. But it would be more impressive if it rendered "BasicBooks" as two words.
By 
Iyov, at
May 3, 2008 1:36 PM
Jim might see this as an example of the Wikiization of education, I prefer to think of it as an example of the fallibility of the librarians on whose work World Cat works, and my own failure as a proper Citation Nazi to spot such errors!
By Tim, at
May 3, 2008 1:39 PM
Now, as well as not reading the WSJ, I also do not read this sort of Magazine. The mags I do read I scan, when I meet a full page of text, like this, I scan it for nuggets and then flip on - incidentally forwards, since I read mags, like Hebrew Bibles from right-to-left ;) If this Bible's intended audience read mags the way I do, they won't get quite (what I'd assume) the intended effect of
the opening of Joshua! Andrew links this to the Samuel
Pepys blog:
The Bible Illuminated is an example of a range of classic texts that are attracting new audiences through modern methods of storytelling.The diary of Samuel Pepys has been turned into a blog, with daily entries corresponding to the 17th-century original, at www.pepysdiary.com. The creator, British actor Phil Gyford, says the site gets around 35,000 unique visitors each month. "I thought I'd like to read the diaries, but the 10 volumes were a daunting prospect,"he says. Transmitting it as a blog "seemed obvious," he says.Now, it seems to me too, "obvious" that Pepys diary would make a good blog, the form and medium "fit". But I am not convinced that either the new Swedish Bible Magazine, or the earlier Teenage Mag versions, do fit form and medium to the content and genres of the Bible. Now, Joshua is not a good text for my argument, since narrative can perhaps be effectively transposed into very different forms and still "work", but imagine one of Paul's letters... One big glossy picture, and one page of Pauline prose... Yawn! As you know I prefer the audio route... (to check it out try some of the recent Romans from PodBible). ¶ 12:30 PM
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I read magazines back to front as well--it must be the Hebrew influence...
By 
Charles Halton, at
April 15, 2008 12:58 PM
No, just natural, we are rtl people stuck in a ltr world, just watch the other people in a Dr's waiting room 63% read the mags "from the back"!
By Tim, at
April 15, 2008 2:16 PM
Remediation, aura and technologies of (biblical) authority
The notion that the Bible has authority has been very significant in statements of faith and constitutions of many churches and Christian movements. Yet understandings of what textual authority might mean are inevitably different when the text is expressed in different media. Concepts of textual authority that have dominated understanding of such church documents have been drawn almost exclusively from print-dominated cultures. Yet, in addition to a historical progression from oral to written, from scroll to codex (at least in Christian circles), and from manuscript to print, the biblical text has always been variously mediated. Oral and written mediations of the text existed alongside each other since the precanonical phase. The biblical manuscript tradition remediated (Bolter's term) the text in many ways, adding spaces between the words, adding commentary around the text, illumination and other "decorations".
Contemporary remediation of the Bible is even more varied and extensive. In print medium a plethora of consumer Bibles each mediates the text in distinct ways, as each also imitates earlier mediations of the authoritative text. From early renderings of the Bible in audio tape and video film, more recently digital delivery and production of such non-written media has enabled an explosion of non-written biblical "texts".
This paper examines the "technologies of authority" (the term used in different fields by Akkermans and Schwartz, Katznelson and Zolberg, Salmón Muñiz, and Tatlock) that different mediations of the biblical text utilise. It will also explore how the concept of "aura" (Benjamin) throws light of discussion of biblical authority in an electronically dominated media culture. It then attempts to generate a framework for understanding how notions of the (biblical) text as authority interact with changes of medium.
Akkermans, Peter M. M. G., and Glenn M. Schwartz. The Archaeology of Syria: From Complex Hunter-Gatherers to Early Urban. Cambridge UniversityPress, 2003.
Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. The MIT Press, 2000.
Katznelson, Ira, and Aristide R. Zolberg. Working-Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe And. Princeton UniversityPress, 1986.
Salmón Muñiz, Fernando. “Technologies of Authority in the Medical Classroom in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries.” Http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/text. http://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=1312778.
Tatlock, Lynne . “Authority, Prestige, and Value: Professionalization in the Musicians' Novels of Wolfgang Caspar Printz and Johann Kuhnau .” In The Construction of Textual Authority in German Literature of the Medieval and Early Modern Periods . Edited by James F. Poag and Claire Baldwin. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2001.
Labels: biblical.studies, media, writing
¶ 9:51 PM
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On Monday we head off for Sri Lanka, so if you want to hear from me over the next couple of months please subscribe (by RSS or email) to the blog that will have writing, photos (and we hope video interviews with interesting people) relating to this travel and teaching Old Testament in South Asia including a refugee camp. (If you have a blog yourself please link to it, so that people find it before we return ;)
Labels: biblical.studies.online, narrative, writing
¶ 8:19 AM
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My article has been lightly corrected and is now nearly ready to submit, so if you want to pre-read or have comments on "The image of the invisible God: (an)iconic knowing, God and gender" now is the time!
Meanwhile I have begun collecting reading for the chapter on "Jesus and the Father" for the book about the use of motherly language and imagery to speak about God, whose title might be Not Just a Father.
Labels: writing
¶ 2:00 PM
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so now I must start to list what I'm doing:
- I have completed polishing my paper from the God and Gender Colloquium, it was due in December, so is only a few days overdue, and the other participants have not submitted theirs yet as far as I know, so I'll link to my draft and invite comments and criticism: The image of the invisible God: (an)iconic knowing, God
and gender - I doubt it counts for the "IBSW Month" but I am finishing two sets of course notes (well one is a revision but the other is new)
- I am planning and hope to finalise a proposal for SBL International
- I want to finalise a book proposal for Not Just a Father
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PS: in view of Jim's request below, and because I am one person who certainly does not know what it is all about - but I suspect most others in the biblioblogger circus don't either (except AKMA who knows everything, or at least everything that Dr Jim West does not ;) I'll explain, at least what I understand by the proposal, and therefore what I am offering to "sign up for".
Once upon a time a bunch of people who thought they "had a novel in them" got together (virtually) and assigned the month of November to write, to proclaim on their blogs how much they had written - or confess how little - and to support and encourage each other in writing. They called the scheme MiNoRoMo or some such name (NineOhTooWonOh?), then years later a bunch of academics, who know a good thing when they see it, and who must publish or die, made up their own version with a much more serious and grand name. Few if any biblical studies writers joined in. But many among the biblioblogger circus have writing projects, theses, articles, books... and perhaps we could leverage (trendy marketing term thrown in to make this all sound respectable) the community spirit of blogging to help us actually write and finish something... We're proposing now till the end of January.
The idea is you announce on your blog what you'll be writing, and then post updates on progress, and link to other people's updates and projects. As a result (a) you are encouraged or shamed into writing and (b) you get feedback that may improve what you are writing...
Labels: biblical.studies, writing
¶ 11:53 AM
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I didn't know what Chris was talking about when he posted the idea and I still don't know what it is he is after. What exactly does he have in mind?
By Jim, at
December 13, 2007 7:32 AM
Ah--- so, we're supposed to be writing something (anything in biblical studies) and tell folk that we are writing and thus all be together in a great and grand orgy of 'get it done thou foul slacker or thou shalt be mocked'?
That the gist? Cuz I think we are ALL working on something- whether it be a paper (for those lowly students amongst us) or an article or a book review or a book.
If I've got it aright then I'll be happy to join in the fun. But if I've missed the boat (as Michael Halcomb thinks I did in relation to gross rap and hip hop) then please instruct me more fully.
Or, as the Ethiopian eunuch said to Phillip- "how can I understand this mysterious thing unless someone explain it to me..."
By Jim, at
December 13, 2007 11:09 AM
Yea verily I think thou hast grasped the idea rightfully, unless I'm up the pole, except I suspect the goal is to focus more on encouragement than threats - though even in our society the threat of public shame can work wonders ;)
By Tim, at
December 13, 2007 11:43 AM
As I understand it, the point of NaNoWriMo entails getting around to writing a novel, in a month. Some of my friends actually did write novels (of a sort); more often, people's literary energy peters out after ten days or so.
This is an extremely awkward month for me, holidays and an excursion to Canada and all, but I would welcome the public obligation to make some headway on writing projects (of which, I hesitate to confess, I just accepted another today). So count me possibly in, and I'll try to keep you posted about how I'm doing.
By AKMA, at
December 13, 2007 4:37 PM
Good idea to include January. I could use the public accountability too, so I've joined in.
By Zephyr, at
January 11, 2008 5:19 AM
Remember how we learned, slowly and painfully, that writing for screen was different from writing for print? On screen people scan rather than read, so terse writing, bullet points and headings are all desirable. They facilitate scanning... We also learned, first that text is fluid on the web, that everyone's browser is different, and also (paradoxically) that it is really important to make sure the essential stuff gets "above the fold". "Fold" is legacy language, from the world of print newspapers, meaning visible on screen without scrolling.
First, The Interaction Designer's Coffee Break cites Milissa Tarquini "Blasting the Myth of the Fold". She presents strong evidence (from AOL) that users do scroll. Then, she discusses the design considerations that allow us to help them - basically letting them know that they are scrolling for. Actually this post though very sensible and based on good research reorganises stuff we knew and hopefully already practice.
Then, in "Reviving Anorexic Web Writing" (on classic web-design blog A List Apart) Whose perceptive and hilarious childhood stories you must read! Amber Simmons argues that if we write well then the scanning rules do not apply. This argument needs more thought.
For a start it is not based on research, rather on some evidence and a lot of gut feeling. Then, while it seems clear her claims are true for some web writing. Her own delightful "stories" are a good case in point, one hardly scans them, rather they are read much as one reads a novel (only they are briefer - vignettes). Evidently also many bibliobloggers finest posts are the long ones that encourage real, deep reflection on a topic.
And yet, if a site basically offers information and/or ideas may it not be better to provide them in easy to scan format? If the writing is not the point might bullet-points and brevity still be good? Even better than finely crafted sentences...
Incidentally, and ironically, the image that accompanied Amber's article somewhat undermined her point. though I am still thinking about it - so this is a partial think I think that some writing is better for finely crafted sentences (the quill pen approach) while other writing is better if it provides a targeted dose of information (the syringe)...
Update: I have adapted this post in the light of Stephen's comment below, putting the asides into boxes. Let me know what you think of this "punctuatuion"...
Incidentally, writing this post has reminded me that I need to think about my punctuation - not all the misplaced commas and missing semi-colons, which I know about, but the bigger question of how I punctuate different sorts of parenthesis. I like parentheses, my thinking is a web of very loosely organised parenthetical material. But I need/want to help the reader distinguish parentheses that introduce a new thought (unconnected) from those that explain, or somehow fill out..,. Maybe I should use () for the interruptions and - - for the explanations...
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If your blog software allowed you to, then you could move to implementing "asides" in the posts.
For example, in Wordpress
http://codex.wordpress.org/Adding_Asides
By Stephen G, at
August 7, 2007 12:37 PM
Now there's an idea, even without moving to WP I could do a "style" that displays as a box and just code asides as DIVs with STYLE "aside"...
Actually while writing this I've tried it out...
By Tim, at
August 7, 2007 5:37 PM
Now he has followed up that beginning with a Prologue and I am still being carried along, though I wonder what NT specialists will make of the decisions he took to create the tale - I look forward to any discussion.
Incidentally, Stephen there's another nomination for the carnival, make sure that all the NT bloggers see the series, and so we get some juicy responses.
Labels: writing
¶ 2:43 PM
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Each poet was given a stimulus, so Marge Piercy got this quote about exodus:
She writes - at least on this occasion, with a short time limit - by slapping the main ideas down fast, and then tinkering till it is "right".A people with a moral vision for themselves and humanity emerged through the birth waters of the Sea of Reeds. This vision was created out of the dark night of slavery, from being crushed in the cruel womb of Egypt. They now march toward Mt. Sinai, to meet the Divine Presence that has called them into history.
Rabbi Mordecai Finley
IFbook also pointed to Ian Spiro's fascinating Dlog, at neat Javascript (I think) application that records what you write... So here is me writing a short fragment titled "Writing". (You need Firefox or Safari for this to work, apologies to those with sub-standard browsers ;-) for such impaired folk, and for those without the time (or too lazy) to go watch as you read here is the (final) text:
I've now started wondering what this process does to our reading...
I wonder how such a writing "space" might affect the process of composition. For certainly the "word processor" impacts the way we write [do I need to check the reference for that book?]...
Might putting a recording like this on a blog inhibit, or would we all - good exhibitionists that bloggers are - write rubbish at great speed, or indeed learn to think BEFORE we write - now that would be novel ;-)
I started this with no idea where it was going... and I still do not know how to title it! [I must have missed that bit in skimming the instructions!]
This whole experiment was stimulated by reading the post on the IFbook blog at http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/06/poetry_in_motion.html
and then looking at some of the poems they link to, and then wondering, how would such a tool (if always available) impact writing - after all writing is as interesting as reading!
... and how cool it would be if someone produced an edition of Amos that reproduced this using Wolff's redaction critical analysis to make the "edits" would one "see" the canonical shaping process at work more clearly? When I have time I must try...
Labels: technology, writing
¶ 7:41 AM
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Write good? AKMA on writing with pictures ::
AKMA's post Very Good and Write rightly focuses on focus, but (to my mind at least) carries good advice too far.First the good advice, which I'm summarise as cave canem! Beware of the (shaggy) dogs. Everyone must agree that "just putting something out there doesn’t imply that it will contribute to getting a message across". Focus on the message to be communicated is indeed vital. When crafting words, I know I should follow his advice "don’t confuse and distract your readers with pointless, vague, superfluities" more than I do. (I am addicted to digression.) Indeed these wise words from a preacher (from the start of the following footnote) might beneficially be engraved on every screen:
We should, however, assess such indulgences with a pretty rigorous criterion of whether they contribute to communicating the greater message. (I’m looking at you, preachers who include irrelevant shaggy dog stories in your sermons.)Yet, AKMA is not primarily writing about writing, or about speaking, rather the focus of his post is the use, in writing, of images. With this focus, I find myself less agreeable to the direction of AKMA's advice:
If what you write, or if the images you use for graphical communication, do not contribute to expressing clearly and precisely the message you’re hoping to convey — then don’t confuse and distract your readers with pointless, vague, superfluities.What he says is true, but a partial truth. And partial truth is more dangerous, or in this case more stifling than arrant fiction. Certainly, images should not be added willy nilly, nor be pointless or superfluous. And yet the tenor of the advice is to resist strenuously the visual equivalent of a digression, to focus on images whose communication coordinates closely with the words'. How much depth and richness is lost when this advice is followed!
An image which "connects" to the text, yet connects obliquely, can so often encourage the reader (and all readers need such additional courage) to create new and added meaning of their own. While narrow and tightly controlled focus seeks to constrain readers to paths prepared in advance by the authoritative author!
So, for example, in my notes on the Genesis class' session on "Abraham's children (16 & 21)" I included in the sidebar images and text of Ishmael (see below) found from a Google search on the name. What exactly a reader makes of the implied connection between these modern Ishmaels and their ancient namesake I do not know, cannot know, but I suspect that their reading is richer for the side trip.
Ishmael Abdul Haqq Wanted for Child Molestation
Ishmael Abdul Haqq Derrick is a 29 year-old Black male. He is 5' 8" tall and weighs 156 lbs. He has black hair and brown eyes and a DOB of July 8th, 1971. Haqq is wanted on charges of child molestation. He should be considered dangerous. If you have any information about this person please call the Marion County Sheriff's Department Warrant Section…
Marion County Sheriff’s Department, Indianapolis – Wanted Persons
http://www.indygov.org/mcsd/
This Ishmael was (I believe) Technical Assistant in the Journalism Dept at Technikon PretoriaI suspect there is a personality difference here, Barbara (and some of my colleagues) like (I suspect AKMA) prefer more ordered and orderly communication. They may be infuriated by my Ishmaelite style, but others (like me) delight in such invitations to imaginative play.
http://www.techpta.ac.za/
Labels: writing
¶ 2:24 AM
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Two answers: first, it sounds as though the more diffuse, provocative response is what you actually want. As such, if your readers ponder beyond some specific message-reception, that fits your hope in incorporating the images. I don't have a problem wtih that. (My objection involves what Edward Tufte calls “chartjunk,” the supposedly decorative elements that serve no informative purpose.) The arch-offenders are digital presentations that include images simply because they can, without regard to whether the images advance the presenter’s communicative purpose. So, “imaginative play,” huzzah!
Second, I felt a wave of apprehension when I spotted your examples. Cultural situations very, and I have no idea what reaction those images might engender in NZ, but I’m startled that you chose to illustrate the story of disfavored Ishmael with two images, the more prominent of which specifies that the subject is accused of child molestation and has a name that suggests Muslim identity, and the second of which is slightly optically distorted. In my own setting, I’d expect readers immediately to deplore my racial/ethnic insensitivity. There’s strong reason to expect that my readers would (for instance) interpret the juxtaposition of image and text as implying that Ishmael was [unfavorably] black, criminally harsh to young Isaac, with cartoonishly exaggerated features. I don’t expect that’s what you intended, but at least some of my colleagues and students would latch onto that aspect of the illustrated text in a heartbeat, and (in keeping with my original counsel) I’m inclined to try to head off that sort of [mis]interpretation.
By AKMA, at
November 26, 2006 4:18 AM
By the way, I digress furiously, when I allow myself so to do. And proudly, for that matter.
But when I want not to digress, I take pains to avoid it.
By AKMA, at
November 26, 2006 4:19 AM
AKMA, I did not at all mean to suggest that you are not a skilled and entertaining digressor. Rather to confess my own temptation to digress too often.
Like you I resent "chartjunk" and other forms of irrelevant visual distraction. I did though intend to illustrate that visual material can add depth that is not immediately "relevant" or whose relevance is not fore-ordained by an omniscient auteur.
However, it seems that due to cultural difference all I succeeded was in reinforcing your original point. A nice irony, and a text that neatly self deconstructs ;-) In my defence, and briefly I fondly imagined that my readers would notice the South African Black "Ishmael" who succeeded and created a useful life where one might have expected failure. (Though I suppose here in 2006 the "war on terror" is better known than the terrors of apartheid, wrongly or rightly.) So, thanks for the warning! Perhaps I should have used a different example. (I'll address the question of Arabic sounding names in a separate post perhaps...)
Although (as usual) we almost agree, I think there is a significant difference between writing (and included visual material) which majors on focus and on what the author intends and writing which seeks rather to open avenues for the reader to explore. Although I dislike "chartjunk" I would prefer to commit such a crime than to stiffle my readers' possible imaginative extension of their reading.
By Tim, at
November 28, 2006 8:58 PM
