Opinion: Absorption of Knowledge in the Computer Age

Hello again,

Today’s post is a
opinion piece and won’t solve any problems that can’t be cured by
slowing your life down a bit and paying more attention to the moment.  It’s meant to test a theory (about your patience and not the pattern.  It should be fun reading, anyway).

That being said, I’m going to put this disclaimer here anyway, just
to see how many complaints I get. This post is full of misleading,
and often completely incorrect, information and a few typos. For
instance, I’m well aware that the square of 25 is not 3. Sometimes, I
use the wrong case (we instead of I) on purpose. I don’t address some
points at all. Depending upon how some folks read online, you may very well
have either missed what I just wrote or will have forgotten it by the
time you get to the point where I make that false
assertion.

Rather than bore you to death with all the details,
i’m going to attempt to explain (and have fun with) one basic
concept in the aRticle from this prEvious
post on computer reADing habiTs. (At the bottom, below my ramblings)

tHE writeR begIns
the article (quite cleverly, actually, since he’s assuming
you’ll
be the type of reader he describes and packs that information in
the
relevant places) exploring the theory that most children (and
a lot of teenaGers and adults) are “f” readers when it
comes to reading text on tHe inTernet. the “f” is
Somewhat of a double entendre (I’m going with the strict French
translation of “DoublE understanding” since the term is
mOstly used to describe a “phrase” rather than a single
letter) in this case, since it’s used as both a mnemonic (the
less to remember you by, my dear) for “F"ast and as a
visual descripTion of the patH most onlIne reader’S eyes follow
when reading books or text on the comPuter screen. if you’ve reAd
this faR, the remAinder of the post should be completely
uninteresting. we tried to do a few thinGs on purpose to make
this post enteRtAining on more than just a Plain level. wHatever
doesn’t make sense, probably will when you see the forest.

Just for the record, I prefer to read books on paper. Not
because reading online makes me lose control like Patty Duke in
the presence of a hot dog (see The
Patty Duke Show Theme Song for the full lyrics to that bizarre
reference), but I find that reading a computer screen is
generally either uncomfortable (sitting in a chair or trying to
balance a laptop on my knees) or outright painful (bad refresh
rates and certain colour schemes make my eyes dry up like juicy
oranges and twitch uncontrollably).

Bless all of you who enjoy
reading lots of text online. If I can, I go the library and get the
book instead. Unprovoked question: If I can’t stand reading lots
of text on a computer, why do I write such long blog posts? Am I
sadist, a masochist, both or just oblivious?)

Generally, I
will read every word on an Internet page if, and only if, I have
a particular reason to. This is parallel to my reading habits
offline. If I like an author’s work or I find a book on a subject
I find interesting, you can bet I’ll read every single word in
that book. Speed reading is fine for some (I guess), but it seems
to contradict any sense of enjoyment. Soaking up lyrical prose at 50
pages a minute would be, probably, a really wonderful way to have
an anxiety attack that would make Evelynn Wood proud)

In
much the same way (both online and offline), if I’m just looking for
a particular nugget of information, I’m not sure what letter my
eye-scan pattern creates, but I definitely skim. This is one point
where I felt the article fell a bit short of exploring both sides
of the issue. The assumption being that people read "everything” on
the Internet the same way they read their Facebook pages doesn’t
necessarily hold water.  It’s certainly true in some
situations

As a for instance: If, for some strange reason, I
was surfing the web (nobody seems to do that any more. They stopped
driving down the information superhighway, too), we didn’t
know the square root of 25 (that’s actually supposed to be the
strange part) and discovered that the only place it was listed was
on an online encyclopedia entry on square roots in general, I’d go
there and check it out. One humongous old-school web page that
covered everything from origin of the square, the root, why the
square and/or the root may have nothing to do with numbers, the
history of the square root, detailed biographies of people involved
in the development, application and sustained nutrition of the
Lego-like plant, etc

Now, keeping in mind that I only want to know
that the square of 25 is 3, I would, of course, skim that page like
crazy; probably looking for a table or list of some sort that listed
out common numbers and their square roots.

This activity would be
considered “F” type reading. More like “spots on a
Dalmatian” reading, but who’s counting?) I would be reading
fast, not because I have the attention span of some dumb animal with
a very short attention span (that’s another situation of an entirely
different colour), but because there was only one piece of
information on that page that I was actually interested in reading.
Taken out of context, this might reflect poorly on me and my reading
habits, but, taken within the proper context, it would make me seem
reasonably intelligent and somewhat efficient.

Another reason
kids (there was a big deal made about how having computers in
schools didn’t’ help improve a child’s education, in and of
itself) might read more quickly online (And I am doing my very best
to defend all of you complete idiots out there - I’m just kidding,
of course, but I’m ready for the hate mail) is that a statistical
majority of content available for consumption online is worthless
crap.

Phenomena like “Ad blindness” and “F”
reading are not convenient fictions designed to make us bookish-folk
feel superior. Think about how often you go to the library and just
browse a few pages from a couple hundred books. Have you ever done
that? Really?

And, supposing you did, how many of those books would
be plastered with advertising (like the advertisements on any given web page
that, if you read regularly enough, basically cease to exist after a
certain amount of time)?

Or how many would spontaneously open
other books (in the “Adult” section)?

Or how many would
have titles like “The History and Culture of Ancient Sumeria”
and actually be about 500 different ways you can eat Haggis and
manage not to vomit?

Also, the 10 to 40 dollars that the
average person might pay for
unlimited Internet access per month
makes the ability to consume
volumes and volumes of useless
information incredibly easy.

If you had to pay 40 dollars for a
real book, would you buy the same trash you spend hours mooning
over online? My guess is probably not.

In the offline world, that
40 dollar expenditure on an 800 page book
that promised you (no
matter how little marketing experience you had)
that it could
teach you a revolutionary new method of selling antique
dildoes to
geriatric women (or something else less offensive to geriatric
women) would seem like “COST.”

For your 40
dollar monthly Internet access fee, that 800 page PDF would seem
like “BENEFIT.” No matter how I feel
about geriatric women, the way in which
you read that book in the offline world would, most likely, be
much different than you way you would read it online.

Offline
you’d probably pay more attention. After all you just spent your
40 dollars and this is all you have to show for it (those
geriatric women won’t be on life-support forever). Online, you
could skim the book to find all the relevant information you
needed about dildoes and move along, having, theoretically, spent
only a few cents of your 40 dollar investment. You, and whatever
other kinks you’re carrying around, would still have 39 dollars
and 98 cents worth of perusing to do.

DOGS IS GOOD
FOOD!

if you’ve even scanned down THis far, you probably
rEad that line. why? because it was pRintEd In bold in an article
that iS somewhat devoid of bolditude (it’s NOt a real word, Look it
up in the phonE book)

did you read that and consider that it didn’t
make a whole lot of sense?

are you wondering, right now, if I having
just been jerking you around in a solipsistic pseudo-intellectual
diatribe with the sole intention of wasting your time?

you’re
probably right. as a matter of FacT, you are almost definitely parked
on the left SIDE-street) thIs has beeN an experimenT, after all.

tHe thIng that’S really most questionable about this Piece is the
question of “why would I go to such lengths just to see whAt
happens?”  Think about it. admitting you’ve just wRitten An
opinion piece that doesn’t necessarily Gel on puRpose, provides no
reAl value and
may not have even been worth scanning is a risky
Proposition for a blog autHor. okay, more directly, it’s a risky
proposition for a blog author who wants you to continue to read his
blog and has a reputation to uphold as a semi-competent
working professional in the field. i’m one of those kind of blog
writers.

But, now that you’ve read this post and its half-hearted
apology are you more or less likely to trust that the next post you
read will contain useful and/or relevant information?

Believe
it or not, I’m actually interested in your opinion. Let me know what
you think. Was this post as fun for you as it was for me? Did you
enjoy finding all the incorrect and goofed-up stuff inside it? Do you
think you found it all?

And, most importantly, do these little math
tricks at the end redeem this post in any way whatsoever?

If you want to multiply any number by 5, divide it
by 2 and then move the decimal place one over to the right.

If you
want to multiply any number by 25, divide it by 4 and move the
decimal place to the right two spaces.

And, yep, it even works for
multiplying any number by 125. To do that divide it by 8 and move the
decimal place over 3 spaces.

If you have trouble dividing by any
number greater than, but a multiple of 2, just divide by 2 twice (to
divide by 4) and divide by 2 three times (to divide by 8).

If you
can’t divide by two, I know a great Elementary school. I can probably
get you in on my kid’s recommendation ;)

Ex:

133 x 5 =
(133/2) = 66.5 = 665
133 x 25 = (133/4) = 33.25 = 3325
133 x
125 = (133/8) = 16.625 = 16625

Cool, yeah?

Peace,

Mike