In case you forgot what the incredible sound of dial-up internet sounded like.
Sosnoski's article Hyper-readers and their Reading Engines was written in 1999. If you didn't notice, the technology was a little out-of-date. What the fuck is Zyindex? Wait, I'll google it... Google just basically says its an old ass program for organizing information. Got it. Point being, the technology may have been out-of-date in Sosnoski's article, but his points were still valid. Eva-Maria Jakobs in The Evolution of Web-Site Genres made the same sort of connection (ha. connection) for me when she said, "Do we require new analytic models or can we modify and adapt existing ones?" (362). Just because the technology in Sosnoski's article was old, we didn't need to adapt our analytic models to read it. However, I got real fucking tired of his names for characterizations of hyper-reading. Pecking. Filming. Trespassing. OH MY GOD. Not that I don't think his ideas in these sections weren't great ones -- because I think they all held validity, but dude... pick some different names.
On page 165, Sosnoski wrote, "The effort to chart viable routes through the wilderness of information that surrounds us will surely be worth our time and energy." Two things. First of all, our theme at the Writing Center this year is "Get Lost (in writing)." This worked for that. Sometimes, it's okay to get lost in the massive amounts on information we are presented with, no matter the mode the writing is presented in. Whether it be a dense academic article, a blog post, a video, whatever -- It's alright to be confused as shit. Because, it's the charting of the route out of the wilderness that teaches us most. Second of all -- Maps. I keep coming back to this. Last semester, I was able to be a facilitator for a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Writing Group. Maps are rhetorical. Luckily, I made that connection early and was able to get them to format and organize their papers in the same way they did maps. I won't bore you with the details of this, though I find it fascinating. The theme of maps came up again in the other two articles as well.
Jakobs described the "F" pattern in which readers encounter and retain information from websites. This makes me think of other modes of writing. Is this the same way that readers encounter maps? How do they encounter photos? What about infographics? I'm curious now. Same goes for Hayles's article How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine. How are we reading maps? What about other modes of writing? These articles all discussed the concept of "New Media," though that definition was different for all in terms of their publication dates and the technology available at the time. However, they didn't take into account many other modes of writing that I consider New Media. Now I'm pondering. And rambling. And I'm going to stop.
But, I'll leave you with this:
The thought of maps being rhetorical is entirely new to me. But when I get to thinking about that concept, it makes sense. If we let ourselves get lost in information, it only makes sense that we need to find a way out of that information. A map will do this. Similarly, if we get lost in the wilderness, a map will help get us back onto a path that will (hopefully) help us find ourselves. The colors, symbols, fonts, markers, etc. have the ability to change the way we perceive the map. I guess I don't really get how maps can be persuasive, but that's a discussion for a different time.
ReplyDeleteI keep thinking about the maps that come installed on my phone and the technology behind them. When I look at a map on the small screen of my iPhone, I typically get pissed about the small format. However, something my phone has that a physical map doesn't is the ability to not only zoom but change the map I am looking at. I can look at a standard map, a map of traffic on the streets around me, and even a photo-looking type map that will have me feeling more "watched" than ever. The point being, as the technology around us changes, our information and our perception of that information changes. My internet no longer gives me a dub-step song to listen to as it loads my information, but it gives me access to all the detail I could ever desire. So, that's something.