Sosnoski Sounds Like a Sneeze to Me

I’m not going to go on like I understood everything in the Sosnoski article, because I didn’t. However, there were plenty of things I did get out of it. Sosnoski is convinced that reading things electronically will be the predominant form of reading in the future. I disagree, but that is not the point. Much of what he stated in the early part of the reading was a simple use of today’s technology and how it will eventually affect the future’s reading. Sosnoski explain that anything coming across the screen is neutralized into electronic information. This is something I find to be true.
As this electronic information became readily available to us, we more or less concentrated on how easy and fast we could get the information rather than the importance, relevance, or depth of the information. Sosnoski states this as “space portioning out time.” The dangers of this are all too obvious, unfortunately. Because the information is so readily available, and seemingly for free, it is easy for loss of authorship, coherence, meaning, as well as depth and context to occur. It’s sad because, as I read, I reflected on all the times I have looked up information on the web and realized that I had not paid attention to the author, nor cared what it meant to copy and past certain parts or link it to someone else. It is a serious loss of privacy and ownership in that sense. I am guilty of this charge in that I have taken for granted the information available to me and those who provided it. It is sad indeed! One of my favorite quotes Sosnoski used, by Baudrillard, was “We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.”
One cool thing about reading, so says Sosnoski, is that it is a process of selection. I think there’s truth to it. As he put how much of what we retain is what we mainly choose to retain as importance. Generally, what we remember from any reading is plot summaries, characters, important scenes and themes. It was interesting to read Sosnoski explain how his friend had merely skimmed a book that he (Sosnoski) had taken the time to read and they both ended up remembering much of the same things.
Sosnoski talks about search engines and how a search engine is much like and indexing program a human could do; only it does it faster, more thoroughly, and more systematically. Talk about debasing the humans! It was stated like we were incompetent at indexing things. Of course, I’m sure this article wasn’t even trying to insult anyone. Along with search engines, the fact that we read less of the actual text was discussed. Yes, many people skim or peck at things and only pick up some of the things they believe is important; but, I do not agree with Sosnoski in that the information brought up by a search engine is completely inadequate in comparison to the actual text (then again, I wasn’t sure if I was really getting what he was trying to say). So, I won’t venture into that. Better to be thought stupid than to open your mouth and remove all doubt, right?
The more hilarious, yet pitiful part of these hypertext readers is that graphics do play what would be considered a more meaningful role than the words. Sad people that we are, much of the information we come to comprehend is more or less shown with graphics along with words. Also, teachers don’t appreciate how much of their students us the web to gain information. So many resources are incorrect and many more may even be misinterpreted or misunderstood. That is another thing I thought was really cool about this article. The fact that how the reader approaches a text is more important than the text content in how the information is received really blows my mind! I never think of these things, and it’s so true! I’m actually glad I read this, even though it was definitely a tough read. It challenged me to think and that’s all I really care about, ha-ha.