Talk:Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Types of reading

In my first (cough cough) reading of the import, I found myself searching for a clear differentiation among deep reading, literary reading and screen reading. Is literary reading merely reading from paper? --Howard C. Berkowitz 02:02, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

You got me, myte. What about the Reading Railroad? That's why we Editors and Authors are here -- to furnish explications du texte (or du sexe as the case may be).... Hayford Peirce 02:28, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

There is now a literary reading definition drawn from the National Endowment for the Arts. Many of the other references are from JSTOR and other academic sources to which I have no access. NEA defines it loosely as a subset of "literary activity", which includes (circularly defined) reading literature aloud and creative writing. There is a certain amount, it seems, of lit'r'y pretentiousness, don't you know?

Is Carr really saying that fiction/poetry/drama must be read to preserve critical thinking? If so, I disagree vehemently. While I indeed do read much fiction, I don't think it contributes terribly to connect-the-dots political, historical or military analysis. These are things, however, with which Eduzendium students have had difficulty. --Howard C. Berkowitz 05:02, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

The only Carr of whom I am aware is the great Golden Age mystery writer, John Dickson Carr, author of the Dr. Gideon Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale stories, whose biography, by coincidence, I was thumbing through just a couple of minutes ago looking for a reference. Hayford Peirce 05:14, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Some comments from one of the main authors of the original article, sent to the Constabulary

Hi, Mr. Peirce,

Thanks for uploading the article! I will probably not be participating in its further improvement as I'm really too close to the subject at this point and need a break. The broader subject of screen reading, however, does continue to interest me.

I did notice a few formatting issues with the CZ article which I thought I would share with you if you don't mind, obviously part of the de-WPizing process you mention: a) the references with multiple citations are not showing up, probably because of a template issue; b) the picture of a Malling Hansen-Writing Ball needs to be uploaded; c) The Charlie Rose Show should be italicized.

I also noted a discussion on the talk page. It's a great question Howard C. Berkowitz poses. Literary reading, literary culture, and technical reading are probably in a similar category, while screen reading and print reading are in another category with deep reading being one of the questions that that contrast raises. I don't have my own concrete definitions for these terms, but I'd like to see someone try to hammer ones out. Here's my try off the top of my head:

literary reading: wikipedia doesn't have an article about this, nor literary culture, and I don't quite have a good grasp of what the consensus definition of these terms are. Intuitively, I think literary culture is the set of literature that is widely respected while literary reading is the reading of such literature which engages different cognitive faculties than say, technical literature. If Citizendium started an attempt at writing articles about these terms that would be commendable. Maybe you guys could find some experts on the subjects of literary reading and literary culture to help out.

technical reading: reading technical literature which engages a different reading process, involving scientific and computer programming literature and so on, while literary reading involves metaphors, references to other literature, and so on.

screen reading: a very interesting topic, mostly considered in contrast to print reading. screen reading is reading on a screen, such as a laptop, a kindle, and so on, while print reading is reading texts on paper in its various forms. The study of the differences between the two is a burgeoning field given the popularity of the kindle and other new gadgets out there.

deep reading: coined by Sven Birkerts in the 90s, given a cognitive definition by Maryanne Wolf in the 2000s, and used by Nicholas Carr following his interview with Wolf prior to the publication of his essay. How deep does one read on a screen considering the distractions & etc, in comparison with a book? That's one of the biggest applications of the concept of deep reading.

(signature of so-and-so) Hayford Peirce 04:33, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Collaborative interest?

Who is interested in serious development of this article? My initial work was a courtesy to Hayford, but, indeed, there's room for development -- as well as spinoff articles. There are Citizens who know far more than I do about cognitive psychology and neuroscience, and, I'm sure, the formal literary world.

The various sorts of reading could be clarified, although I'm not sure the set in the article is the best. For example, if literary reading involves metaphor and comparison, how is that different than historical reading (perhaps historiography)? Good programming books, incidentally, make extensive use of metaphors and case studies; I still like my sidebar discussing how color blindness could have started World War III. --Howard C. Berkowitz 14:32, 16 February 2010 (UTC)