tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856697805993319185.post4886685319143207457..comments2024-03-05T06:30:03.509-08:00Comments on Digital Riffs: My Acts of ReadingAndrew Prescotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07861908988990764618noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856697805993319185.post-64572721142035121872015-03-25T10:01:40.426-07:002015-03-25T10:01:40.426-07:00An interesting essay (or as we say today, an inter...An interesting essay (or as we say today, an interesting 'post').<br /><br />I have just re-read Carr's book The Shallows. The first time around I didn't pay much attention to it but this time I find that there are some excellent passages about the differences between reading web-sourced texts online and printed texts. Also an interesting section on the way in which online search for academic papers tends lead us to find what we are looking for, thus narrowing he range of materials we encounter and reducing diversity in our citations. This has both a cognitive dimension and a software dimension (it's the way Google works for example - its very purpose is to give you what you are looking for, unlike an old-style library catalogue where one could encounter all kinds of obscure ad serendipitous stuff).<br /><br />I think that discussion is in Chapter 7 but I'm reading it on a Kindle and brilliant though that tool is it's a dog when you want to look up marked highlights and passages. (Incidentally, I think that a useful aspect of the LSE project might be to take a serious look at how ereader interfaces should work - markup and text search being a key tool for academic reading and relatively poorly implemented on the Kindle.)<br /><br />For my taste I find that Carr overdoes the neuroscience by miles but he may offer one answer to why you find scribing notes more satisfying:<br /><br />"It is the very fact that book reading understimulates the senses that makes the activity so intellectually satisfying". (Kindle location 2006)<br /><br />That very notion, that book reading understimulates, is intriguing and perhaps not what we normally think about reading; he suggests that is what gives print-book reading a depth that online reading may lack. And that intellectual depth is perhaps what you are getting when you are using your 2H to transcribe your commentaries.davidjlongmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02329890591240147255noreply@blogger.com