After going over the reading and discussing with others about the
issue of e-readers I realised how unaware I was to the full extent of pro's and
con's that e-readers pose to the way in which we intake publications. Maybe
this is due to my age and furthermore my circumstance, I have, for most of
memorable life, had easily available computers, have owned my own laptop for
several years now and have had an iPhone for almost two years so a large amount
of the publications I consume are through some form of digital technology. What
I found interesting in this weeks readings was Jonah Lehrer's idea of
understanding being trumped by perception in the digital age and how it can be
applied to Stanislas Dehaene's research on the Ventral Route and the Dorsal
Stream, areas of the brain which are used to decipher texts.
For myself, as was
the case with Lehrer, I find it much easier to scan over text on a screen and
harder to edit my own text on a screen. I would in essence, for the majority of
most days, be over using my brains Ventral Route. I consume almost every form
of publication, besides books for pleasure reading, through some form of
digital device. Does this mean my understanding of a text I read digitally is
less? and furthermore is this rapidly growing us of digital devices hindering
my ability to learn through my studies? According to Lehrer and Dahaene, most
probably. My understanding of a text is being undermined by my want
to perceive and access it more quickly, a digital irony it would
seem. I see this kind of effect happening in online news publications. For
example when I visit the Sydney
Morning Herald's website to
access my daily news information, I often see spelling and grammatical
errors and I wonder, why? Don't they have editors? Or have
the writers and editors
fallen victim to perception hindering understanding just as I have? Have they
became unable to access their Dorsal Streams while writing large walls of text
and at an ever growing pace to keep up with the twenty four hour demand for
information online? Whatever the answer, there is clearly a trend forming among
online publications.
On a further note,
as Erick Schonfeld points out, with the availability of applications
such as Read It Later and Instapper, where a user can, in essence, bookmark a
publication to read at a later time, which he said, for some users, appears to
be consuming peoples television time. Applications like these are making it
even easier to perception to trump understanding. The convenience of
e-readers would appear to good to pass up.
As Lehrer states,
'consumer technology moves in a single direction: it's constantly making it
easier for us to perceive the content'. So what can we do? In terms
of hindering the rate of technology, nothing really. We can only try to
maintain our sense of nostalgia with printed publications and make an
effort to challenge our minds and challenge ourselves to
learn to the most of our abilities. Easier said then done.
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