My last blog ended on a note about
how time consuming searching through and skimming printed books can be. Taking
this even further I’m going to say that skimming can be a major problem that
can happen in printed and electronic texts. When people start hyper-reading,
which James Sosnoski characterizes as filtering, skimming, pecking, imposing,
filming, trespassing, de-authorizing, and fragmenting, that is the problem. A
very popular way of reading electronically is when you only read the
information you are in search of. This would be using the hyper-reading ideas
of skimming, filtering, pecking, and imposing. You skim the text and pick the
ideas you are looking for out of it. When someone picks and chooses the words
they want to read that is when problems arise. That is when the reader ends up
forming their own ideas about the topic they are reading about. This is because
when they are only reading certain parts of an excerpt, they are only getting a
couple ideas out of it, but not the concept as a whole. That is a problem
because when you only take part of an idea from an excerpt, it may not be the
idea that the author is trying to convey. In fact, you could be taking
something from the text that is the opposite
of what the author is trying to say!
I was skimming reviews for a good pre-workout energy
supplement and I found one that sounded great. I read the first line of the
review that said, “Users say this is the greatest pre-workout energy they’ve
ever used!” I thought, “Perfect!” and instantly added it to my cart.
Unfortunately for me, I did not continue to read the review when I absolutely
should have. After taking the supplement and going to the gym without a single
burst of energy I went back to read more reviews. It continued to say, “Readers
beware! The company writes their own reviews for this product and there have
been studies about how ineffective this pre-workout energy supplement is. You
will not notice a difference in energy levels! Save your money! Do not buy this
product!” After $45 down the drain and a bad workout, I learned my lesson about
hyper-reading. I learned that it is important to read the entire excerpt, or at
least know the authors stance on the subject matter, in order to avoid
misconceptions.
I’m not saying hyper-reading is always
bad, though. It can be useful especially when you already know the authors’
ideas and when you are just going back to look for specific information.
Hyper-reading can be a great strategy to help you reread something to refresh
your memory. And it’s a major time saver, for sure.
One way hyper-reading has saved me
precious studying hours this semester is by just skimming my chemistry
teacher’s power points over the main concepts of the unit, instead of going
back and rereading the entire chapter in the textbook. Rereading the chapters
in the textbook would take me hours, whereas reading these power points only
takes a few minutes, and it helps just as much. However, I’ll only read a power
point after I’ve read the chapter it is about, and I do it just to reiterate
the ideas and to make the content fresh in my mind before taking a test. I
would never only read the power points as a substitute for reading the textbook
because the power points are not as in depth and they only cover the main
ideas. This isn’t to say that I wouldn’t rather read my textbook online,
however, because I would, since I like reading off of a computer screen better.
Contrary to Birkerts’ belief, the online textbook would not be losing logic and concept just from being on a computer screen.
Although he says, “the presentation structures the reception,” (Birkerts 122),
if the books say the same thing, I would be getting the same information and
concepts out of an online textbook as I would a printed textbook, thus the
online textbook is the source I would go to if it were available.
Just be careful because
hyper-reading is not always the best strategy when learning about a new
subject, since that is when you can misinterpret what the author is really
trying to say. This is what can lead to bad things, like bad workouts. To avoid
problems like these, avoid hyper-reading unless you know the main ideas of what
you are reading. Because of all the search engines out there, if you know what
information you want to find, and you want to find it fast, electronic media
will be your best friend, even if hyper-reading isn’t the main strategy you
choose to use. Key words are the most important part of quickly finding
information electronically and hyper-reading will just help bring you to these
key words. Since hyper-reading is all about reading words, it is not letting
images and impressions take precedence over logic and concept. Hyper-reading
and keywords are not diminishing logic and concepts, but rather getting you to
them quicker, especially with the use of Google.
