Another interesting point in this article was Sonoski's thoughts on people "keeping up in their fields" and how, especially in the scope of this class, it seems an insurmountable task. The endless cyber desert contains so many relevant and irrelevant items that you can be stuck for hours on tangent stacked on tangent tabbed on tangent new windowed on tangent...you get my gist. However, we focus, within this desert, oasis's that contain the sweet vitality of sought information, yet it is a "discrete hypertext" that only I have the map to get too (and all of you of course) and of course the stray soul who happens by and either stays and shares the oasis's wealth of stock or moves on to other, perhaps better, oasis's. Is there a complete mastery to this field? I would say that Professor Sexson would be a strong claim to this, yet how can any one person or even a group of people decide what defines and encompasses mastery over the written English language.
In Jakob's article I was fascinated (if not not a little exasperated) with his brief, yet great, description of Memex. Of having a camera strapped to your forehead that recorded everything you saw or heard and arranged it in to a semi-cohesive pattern? Ok having a camera strapped to your forehead would be a little annoying, but with today's advances in technology could the use of a microchip formed to tap into your five senses and then record and assimilate what is important to you and all the other stuff. How many times have you had a mind blowing realization slip through your fingers, or could not quite remember how reading a certain passage made you feel in relation to relatable subject. It's funny, most of you (including me) thinks this an improbable possibility that will happen when there are flying cars and all that jazz. Put this into perspective though, Ted Nelson came up with his universal knowledge-managment and information-production system called XANDU. It was, if I
Hey Cavin, really interesting points about skimming! What purpose do you think skimming serves, other than its utilization in hypertext? Is it just a lazy strategy used by overworked and over-caffeinated college students (of which I am one) or is it actually a necessary tool to sort through all the information at our disposal and choose the most relevant for our needs? I would argue the latter, given the information revolution. In past years in education, I think skimming was more taboo because each mote of information was perhaps the only available on the topic. Now, with such a vast array of information with variable degrees of quality and relevance, we have to skim to find what we should actually read. Super interesting. Thanks! (And if you just skimmed this comment, I would not be offended).
ReplyDeleteGoogle glass. I don't think we're as far away from it is we think we are. Technology is growing pretty fast. My wife has a cousin that has a brain disease that makes him lose motor control and he starts shaking violently (similar to Parkinson's). To fix it, they put a chip in his brain and gave him a remote control. When he feels an episode coming on, he simply pushes a button and no episode.
ReplyDeleteAlso, since you've outed yourself as a skimmer, I hope to see a blog post sometime in the future about your skimming techniques!
Ha! I was also skimming when I reached Sosnoski's skimming section. And I agree with you; I don't see it as taboo, but necessary. I see a bit like the way we edit our writing--taking out any unnecessary information to make our point as streamlined as possible. Skimming is just taking the same process back into reading.
ReplyDeleteWhat you said about 'keeping up in our fields' was interesting. I think it is possible, but there is so much information that it would be difficult to keep up in several. We can even see this in our education system--we don't learn about all subjects, but in-depth about one or two. Of course, what denotes complete expertise is a subject is up for debate, as you noted in your post. :)