In the lecture Hyperlinking was talked about quite a bit and in reference to it the comment 'reading isn't reading' was made. This meaning that reading something online is very different to reading a book. When reading a book you can only read what is on the pages, however online on many websites there are often several hyperlinks catching the attention of the users to move to read other pages. I think that the comment of 'reading isn't reading' is fair to make as personally i find it very hard to only read the part of the website that i want and not drift onto something else.
It was also suggested that New Media can facilitate change. I do believe that New Media has the power to and has done this. New Media such as the Internet has changed the way lessons are taught in school, as now there are Internet based classes, or topics in which Internet surfing is encouraged. Furthermore there has been change in offices, with new technology and mobile broadband and wireless networking changing how many businesses are run.
I believe New Media is changing the world as we speak, allowing communication - instant or asynchronous, communication mostly free after the initial purchase and even playing a role in the structure of education and businesses.
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Hi Kerry
ReplyDeleteSome of those ideas about 'reading isn't reading' are very true and I think all of us suffer from wandering-clicks that end up taking us far away from where we started (and not knowing how to get back!) Yet a lot of the commentary is a few years old now, and predates some of the more recent developments - for instance e-books, where you at least get books that look like books, and some of which have an action that replicates page turning. Will that do though? Is this anything like a RL reading experience, or is the point-and-click syndrome not to be kept at bay by this?
As to your other point about new media changing what we do - particularly in education, can you remember a time when you had no access to the net to research (or is that before your time?) How did you find out stuff? And was that stuff better or worse quality than is available now? Is that question even relevant, and if not, why not?!
Nice to see some reflection on the lecture here - well done Kerry!
Even with those E-Books though, you can still type a word or phrase in the search bar and it will immediately scan the whole book for the words and take you to the page. So you are still using the books in a different way to which you'd use real books. Even though people do not think skimming pages, and missing information through hyperlinks isn't a problem, people could still be missing out on vital information that can only be picked up by reading a book page to page.
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