When I was in high school reading was one of my favorite past times, in fact it was my only past time. I grew up in a household that had no accessible television or internet. My father had a computer in his office that I was not allowed to use and my mother had a TV that she used to watch terrible VHS movies that I didn't want to watch anyways. My parents always told me that if I was bored then I should pick up a book, study, or go play sports. When I went to school my friends would always talk about the latest show or internet phenomenon and I had no clue what anyone was talking about. But, when a reading assignment or book report was due, I was the first one to have it read and completed. Also, I didn't just read books, I ingested them. I read every word and could interpret meaning even in the most complicated Shakespearean plays. This intense reading was coupled with an incredible ability to concentrate and focus on words, meaning, and subtext.
This all changed when I went away to college and bought a laptop. With this new, modern tool I discovered how to do slacker reading and research. Any information that I wanted was all of a sudden a click away. Instead of having to do hours of reading and research for a project or report I simply had to Google it. My projects took half as long and I began to search for the most expedient way to complete each educational task. I had became, what I called a skimmer. Since the information became more and more expedient I became more and more obsessed with getting it faster. Nothing was fast enough for me, not even reading the articles that were made readily available. No instead of reading it, I simply extracted the quote or passage that I needed for my project and dumpted the rest. I love this new way of doing work. I takes me no time at all and I don't have to do all of that pesky reading. My mother noticed my new lifestyle and she told me it was very bad and that I should read the old fashioned way. But this new way is much better, now i have the time to do what i want.
I think your posting is certainly relevant to the Palfrey article about changing patterns of readership and generational shifts, but I would like to see you think about communicating with public audiences in ways that convey original information, analysis, or insight. Keep in mind the importance of images, paragraphs, links, and tags in organizing your blog postings.
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