Last week our readings were all on the web. This week they were in our print textbook. What observations can you make about your experience of the print reading and the online reading? Did you approach the texts differently. If so, in what ways? Did the texts affect your knowledge/learning in any different ways? If so, in what ways? Comment specifically on two or three examples from our reading. Include at least one quotation to support each example.
posted by la professore at 2:12 PM
4 Comments:
I have to admit going from a class that seems entirley internet based to a reading
assigment out of anv actual book, and not off of a computer screen, was a different
experience. I personally love to read when I have the chance, and my first choice is
NEVER to read a novel from the internet, but rather it is always my first choice to acutally
be able to hold the book, in my hands, that I am reading. So when asked about my
experiences of reading from the text book as opposed to online reading, I would have to
say that I actually prefer it because it is a technique that I am most used to. I would
definetley say that I approached the text differently that I would an online article, in the
sense that I almost felt more comfortable reading it. Instead of staring at a computer
screen for about an hour or so, I was able to sit down in a big comfy chair to read the
text, which I believe made it more enjoyable for me. The text talked about things that I
would assume I would know about, things such as E-Mail, but not ideas that I would think
about in depth on a daily basis. For example the journey of an E-Mail, for all I know I
write a letter to a friend, click send, and within a few seconds it's there without any effot
on my part. When I was reading John Dyson's "Journey of an E-Mail," it seemed really
technical to me, yet amusing at the same time. We as the readers know that Mr.Dyson is
not acutally "[...] into and out of Philadelphia, up the Ohio Valley, through Cleveland and
into another telephone exchange at Willow Springs," just to track an E-Mail. In Andrew
Leonard's "We've got mail always," he makes a funny comment that says "I'd rather lose
an eye than lose my e-mail account." At first when you read this one would probably
take it as a joke, not to say that he would acutally lose an eye for his e-mail account, but
it made me think about if I were to lose my e-mail account, I would be lost. I actually
found Fred Kaplan's "The end of history" interesting, but somewhat confusing at the same
time. I think I understood the point of his passage to be that today it is so easy for
valuable information to be lost because it is all on computers, but I prefer the humorous
inserts, such as Andrew Leonard's "We've got Mail." Overall though I did enjoy reading
this text.
Hope,
I DEFINETLEY agree with you on the fact that reading an actual book, even a textbook at times, is much more enjoyable that reading a computer screen. In the past, I never was much of a "reader" but recently this year I have really started to understand and experience the joys that can come from reading a book, even if it wasn't assigned. It is also very true what you said that if you are reading something off of a computer screen, whether you wireless or dial up, it is still a pain to have to long off and come back to it, if you have to stop what you are doing in the middle of it. It's funny that you mentioned the Nixon impeachment because when I read Fred Kaplan's "The End of History," it made me think of the same thing. The only thing that I found we didn't have in common in your blog was the constant checking of e-mail. Unfortunetley for me I am an e-mail junkie, and continuously checking it; but luckily for you that is not a problem. Anyways I just wanted to let you know what I thought of your post, see you in class on Thursday!
The most striking of all our readings from the text would be "Journey of an E-Mail." The way he harps on the speed at which all this information travels does not excite me but the metaphors he uses are very insiteful. "Imagine a postal clerk who chops your letter into little bits and put them in seperates envelopes" does not sound very technological at all. Even though I still like to think of technology as being too complicated for me to understand analogies such as this one help to shed some light on the current state of email. The other article "We've Got Mail-Always" broudened my opinion of the internet a bit more. His descriptions on the beggining of email really made me think. "Oddly enough, no one planned it, and no one predicted it." refering to email here, this statement says alot about the proggresion of technology in general. Take for instance a movie you might have saw 15 or 20 years ago when a film depected the year 2020 as an era of androids and flying cars. We are standing in the year 2006 and I don't really believe anyone will be flying with a jetpack or cloning themself anytime soon but Leonards comment in this article lets the reader know that during the fashioning of a new technology something great was invented sort of like an afterthought. This maybe a little off subject but technology seems to move in leaps not as some speeding train like we would like it to be. As for our readings, I now look at the internet and email alot differently, not simply as a way to communicate but more as a media revolution.
In response to Sancho,
I beleive we share very similar opinions about online reading as opposed to paper text. Reading from a computer screen just seems more eventful to me and when you mentioned color pictures that is one of the biggest reasons why. Being able to access material from anywhere such as this site is much more convenient especially when you consider how much our textbooks cost. Sure, the text book will never be replaced in the academic world but the existence of the internet has made research and opinion sharing so much more convenient.
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