Reading
I've been to Reading, we should be worried.
Google boss Eric Schmidt is worried that kids will lose the skill of reading for comprehension and deep understanding as they increasingly use devices rather than actual books. Schmidt, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, said: "The one that I do worry about is the question of 'deep reading'. As the world looks to …
that Schmidt should say this, given what teh Steve was recently reported to have said about Google. I mean, it's almost a subtle endorsement of the iPad, which is an "instantaneous device" that is also dedicated to reading...
Mine's the one with the iPad in the pocket, loaded with all those works that Google scanned.
I am a bit confused about what he means - reading is reading, regardless of whether the words you read are displayed on an LCD screen, printed on paper, engraved in stone etc.
I read one electronic book long time ago. I was using a Psion5 and it was a pain in the eyes but I
enjoyed the contents of the book just as much as if it was a normal, printed one.
I read Samizdat "books" which were typed manually with a typewriter and photocopied for distribution and there again I did not notice any reduction in comprehension levels.
So, what really is his point?
People are lazy and don't read. No news there. You can see the result of this on Youtube, where people will happily spend 10mins listening to some random nobody talk at a webcam, but would never dream of reading the same waffle on random nobody's blog.
Anyways, I had a really good analysis of this story. But no-one would bother reading it because it was more than a paragraph long and didn't end in a joke.
Icon, because a pretty picture is easier than reading a categorised summary.
I am more worried about a world my kids will grow up in dominated by a company so overbearing that they will soon own the "common" internet and have enough power to build their own private internet!
This bullshit from a bloke who trotted out the tired old mantra, "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear from Google."
I encourage my kids to learn to read, but more importantly I encourage them to think for themselves. Reading is a skill it can be learned as required. Thinking individual thoughts has to be developed from an early age, very hard to develop later on in life when you're more set in your ways or brain-washed by corps like GOOGLE!!!
"...when reading [a book], you should not be the master [as you are when reading digitally]...surrendering to the organizing logic of a book is, after all, the way one learns."
David A. Bell, Historian and Professor at Johns Hopkins University cited by Christine Rosen, "People of the Screen"
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/docLib/20081020_TNA22Rosen.pdf
and some other thoughts along these lines here:
http://sites.google.com/site/maar258/thoughts-on-text-image
Have you ever read any of Google's scanned books? They are so littered with typos, that if any one attempted to do the reading he laments they aren't doing, they'd stop because they're tired of typos. Take a look at the Federalist Papers that Google provides, or you can get them from Project Gutenberg which offers a proofed copy.
I read Professor Bell's article (cited above) until he started to rhapsodise about "forgotten treasures tucked amid the pages". University staff have to justify their comfortable positions. Reading a PDF is not so very different from reading a book, in my experience. Books have survived the onslaught of television and they will continue alongside the various types of ireader. Maybe this is not always a good thing: I'm not sure that time wasted on CSI New York (or Silent Witness) is better spent on the works, for example, of Stieg Larsson. (I once visited Reading Reading Centre.)