| What does the web offer in terms of new ways of reading? (Let's pretend that I'm not asking this because it's one of the topics offered up for the final paper in COLT 10.) But seriously, it can be a pretty fun thing to think about if you're not writing a paper on it...
How much time to people spend surfing the net just reading tids and bits of blogs, news blurbs, lewd jokes and anecdotes? Let's not even go into the whole stalking fiasco with facebook and other such networking communities. People seem to be so protective of their privacy and yet these communities are springing up all over the place - now on MSN for example you have a blog, photo album, music list, profile, etc all in one. Just go ahead and put your whole life out there if you want - and people will spend hours browsing through the lives of strangers.
Blogging is just one form of web readership though, I must admit that I spend more time reading random "informative" news bits when I'm procrastinating rather than blog-surf...(and sometimes web-forums, almost forgot about those). I guess it all comes down to the instant-gratification dealio with being able to jump from one topic to another, just googling random names, events, etc. Say I'm reading a news blurb on some new study about the color red and how it effects your chancing of winning in sports. Now, there's no reason I have to limit myself to this one article that someone just happened to have pointed out to me... Now that I was pointed in the direction of some topic, I can instantly pull up 20 more articles at least vaguely relating to the same thing that will often give me different points of view and details left out in the first article. Then it becomes a game, how much can I read about one topic until I get bored and google some other random bit of pop-news?
Even when I'm making an honest effort to get some work done, looking up something directly related to something I'm working on for school, this game draws me back in. Say I couldn't remember the exact circumstances around the Rodney King beating, trial, and the riots the followed and I needed to refresh that in my memory for something we were discussing in class... Well, I get more than enough information about the whole issue from the first 2 or so website I visit, but I don't stop there - because it's just too easy. So I spend another couple of hours reading about it, just because I can. At this point I've got enough info to start writing a research paper on the topic, but not because I need all that info to put the class reading into context, but because it's just out there.
I think this all is a diversion though, that's not really talking about ways of reading. That's more like, how much you choose to read and WHAT you choose to read....
This post didn't mean to have a point really, I just need to get started on writing my final paper proposal... *sigh*
P.S. How do you read stuff online? What do you read? Anyone have any insights on this? |
