For assignment 4, I’ve revamped my approach and am now planning on using the article discussed in class which is entitled, “Is Google Making us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr. I’ve chosen this one because I not only now have a better understanding of the assignment in general, but also because it has so many similarities to the themes presented by Birketts such as the legitimacy of text, reading’s correlation to the way people socialize, and so on. I have disagreed with Birketts from the get-go, and this paper will be no different. As I said in the beginning, reading is reading, no matter the form or the venue, and I plan to flesh this argument out further, while also disagreeing with not only Birketts on the broader matters, but also with Carr on the more specific ideas he presents within his article. I plan to focus a lot of my essay around this passage:
“We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged
With this in hand, I will pick apart Birkett’s concepts of “vertical reading” and “horizontal reading,” and in a way, redefining his term “vertical reading.” I see a connection with clicking through pages, and going deeper and deeper into web based text as an even better form of vertical reading in which the reader benefits more and more with each click – a click that Birketts strongly condemns.
I think the strongest counter argument is that the accessibility has made us dumb, however I don’t see that as a strong argument. I think, as I said in class, that there is simply a disconnect between the generations and an unwillingness of the older generations to make room for the new venues on which reading will be presented as time goes on.
