Response to Hayles
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 1 Being born in 1995, I grew up with the internet and it being a daily part of my life, especially since my father works for a Microsoft company. I don’t remember what reading was like before internet, but I can see the difference on reading skills of when I was younger with limited internet skills to now being an adult and fully immersing myself into the Internet.
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 Before the internet, or at least before it was as popular as it was today, reading was something that people did on paper and read one article or book after another. I don’t think people read many things at once (or at least I can’t imagine) and there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for broadening your literary skills. People read what they liked, and that’s mostly all.
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 1 The internet has definitely made us have short attention spans that contributed to me having more “skimming” reads than close reads. Though this might mean that I can now read more than I have ever read before, it also means that I can’t specialize in anything that I read. I have lots of broad knowledge from skimming articles, but no real focus. The internet also has made me lose focus when actually reading. If you go on the New York Times or even The Herald, there’s always ads and hyperlinks that distracts us. I can go on another web page and return to the point where I last read, but I don’t always remember what the heck I was reading. The Internet has made me lose the retention of what I am reading.
¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 1 There’s not one best way of reading, and that comes down to knowing your audience. If you want your article or essay to be skimmed, so that it gets the most reads, then you can adapt the Buzzfeed mentality and write out the summary in the beginning, and then develop your idea or topic, bolding words and sentences along the way to attract as much attention. If you want people to do a close reading, you’d have to write it for an older and probably more scholastic audience, and on a PDF file so that they aren’t attracted to the ads.
Thanks for making me feel old. I have been around long enough to completed most of my high school education pre internet. I think distraction in general has always been a problem for reading and retention. I will admit it’s worse now with both internet and technology having such a influence in almost everyone’s lives. Did your father working for Microsoft have any influence on your adoption of tech or internet use when you were younger?