Read It And Wap
The internet has undoubtedly changed the way we process information, but at the core of that is how we read, since the internet is still largely text-based.
I think the online revolution has encouraged more reading and writing than anything from the decade before it. Think about it - 1995 to 2005 saw the rise of email and changed the way millions of people gathered information. The ten years before that say the expansion of linear communication with more television channels and faster delivery of content, but your couldn’t really call it a flow of information in terms of an exchange.
Internet use has changed how we read, because there is more information available, in smaller chunks and from more sources. It has changed the volume of information in news items. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, I’m just saying it’s different. I’m a big fan of the two-minute news bulletin, as long as it changes every half hour and I can access it whenever I want. I also tune in to (”tune in to” – get me) half hour subjects on a particular story, but I wonder if that’s because I grew up before the internet age. But generally, we don’t sit down and read things the way we used to. The armchair grows dusty as we tear around the house trying to get a wifi signal while sucking down a latte from the Starbucks that has just opened in the living room.
Richard Sambrook is the latest editor to pop up on my blogdar with an article site wherein he looks at the changes in reading habits. His blog Sacred Facts is excellent, by the way, and I recommend it not just for his writing but also for his own tuned-finely sense of blogdar among journalists’ blogs from which he picks, sifts, boils down and serves up a lot of what’s worth knowing in the world of newsgathering so don’t have to do all that reading shit yourselves, right kids?
Like him, I notice that my kids read less than I did at their age, but then they have more diversions at their disposal. Whereas my parents used to give me models and books and games to keep me off the streets, I try to come up with ways of getting them out of the house. Of course the streets are filled with axe-murderers and kidnappers now, or at least that’s what it says in the two minute news bulletin I downloaded while I was writing this.
It has affected family life as well. Kids just aren’t as bothered. They don’t sit on their dads’ knees and ask them what they did in the war. Now fathers walk by their kids while they play Medal of Honour on their Nintendo Wiis, running around the living room shooting computer-generated Stukas out of the sky, and the dads say: “You know your grandfather was there.” And they hit pause and turn to you and go, like: “We’re out of Sunny Delight?”
I use the internet so much that I consciously make sure I read proper books just because if I get out of the habit I find it hard to go back and concentrate. I confess right here that when I start reading I go down the lines with a bookmark for a couple of pages while I get a rhythm going, because with the internet, there is not rhythm. I make sure I listen to long bits of classic music. Bach, Copland, Cosi Fan Tutte (trans. Swimsuit With Everything)
I don’t know whether or not the internet has made me dumber. To be honest, I wasn’t all that bright to start with. The tide will turn again of course (Really? It just goes back and forth, surely) when we all go video on your collective arses. BBC news has done a lot with embedded video, and I’ve done a few turns myself. See this, this and this.
Maybe in five years time, people will visit this site and yield a sigh (yield it, yield it) before leaving the comment: “I remember when all this was words.”
June 26th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
(* heavy sigh *) I remember when all this had original songs tossed in too.
June 26th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
I’m in a very Neil Youngish sort of mood, myself.
June 26th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
All of this nostalgia,
Can lead to neuralgia,
I think I had better sign off here,
Before my brain becomes
like blue-green algae, yeah.
Really liked this post, Cliff… you are indeed a bright bulb in the lighting and lampshades section of the store.
June 27th, 2008 at 2:01 am
The advent of the internetual information is leading to a loss of skills - I was blown away (and not in a Halo sense) when one of my daughters wanted to go to the library to find a book for a school project. We went, and I taught her how to use the shelving system to find what she wanted. It is true that, with the internet, information is everywhere, but finding knowledge is still a skill.
June 27th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
You still need(ed) searching skills for either method, I don’t know that one could say the internet is leading to a loss of skills, it’s a lateral movement. Kids are doing things today with computers and DVD players and the like that I’d never have dreamt of playing Dizzy the Egg on my dad’s Atari and doing worksheets on the Dewey decimal system at school. I’m rather impressed.