Scholarly Article #3

Kreth’s article seemed to use a lot of fillers and language that was unnecessary. It reminded me a lot of the way article one was written, but at least this one I could understand enough to keep up with what was being said. It helped that the reading was broken into sections with titles to keep the main idea focused.  I think the author brought up several great points about the change of mediums of writing to images on the screen, though I do not agree with all of them.

One of the first concepts he points out is that in writing there is order. “Order is firmly coded: the order of chapters, the order pages, of lines and of the line, and, of course, within lines as language, the order of syntax.” But then he goes on to claim that words are left “open,” so that experience and culture, can be brought in from the reader to create meaning. I agree, that this is what reading is for, allowing the imagination to live and to create something from the words. On screens however, there is not quite so much order, thus the audience can pick and choose what he or she reads first. I do not see anything wrong with this type of medium. Like the video shown last week, I believe we are custom to multitasking, to finding information as quickly as possible, and being able to scan through a screen, allows us to do just that; whereas reading, we can scan, but it’s not as easy to pull things out from a sea of words. We are adjusting to the features of our generation.

And when he points out that we are no longer readers, but visitors, I believe that is also true. We don’t really read a web page or site, we visit it, we scan it, find what we are looking for, but in no way do we read or see everything that the page offers.

And finally one of the last points that is mentioned is the fact that now everyone can be an author. There are a lot of truths behind this article. With the internet being an open publisher, everyone can create something. What they write may not be true. What they write may not even be good. But it is there. And that is where we, as the audience, have to be able to separate the bad and good. Being literate is important. Being well read doesn’t just entertain coffee shop talk, but allows the mind to slow down, digest what is being read, and allows us to think.  Perhaps having screens are doing us a disservice in that we are so impatient for the knowledge that we want, that we are not getting the knowledge that we need.