impact of digital technology

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Reading on line – why it is attractive...

• multimodal • interactive • personalised• non-linear and expansive• collaborative and participatory• ‘read –write’ Web 2 technologies• up to date• global in coverage• free

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Hypertext links and interactivity

‘reading on screen with hypertext is comparable to moving from the passenger’s seat to the driver’s seat’

p7 Screens and Pages- by Sue McKeown, Mary Moss and Tracy Slawon

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The speed issue…

‘The technology primes us for speed, overwhelmed, we are happy to have it help us speed up.’

Alone Togetherp 166

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The distraction issue…

‘an ecosystem of interruption technologies…’

The Shallows – what the internet is doing to our brainsp 91

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Net Smart – how to thrive online

‘continuous partial attention, an always-on, anywhere,

anytime, any place behaviour that involves an artificial

sense of crisis’

p 58Net Smart – how to thrive online

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Taken from ‘Deep Learning in an Age of Distraction’ a presentation by Alec Couroshttp://dmlcentral.net/resources/4835

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The transparency issue

‘Content comes to us already branded, already shaped through the economics of sponsorship, if not over advertising. We do not see how much these commercial interests influence what we see and what we don’t see.’

Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culturep 16

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Technology and multitasking

‘the brain takes time to change goals, remember new rules

needed for the new task and block out cognitive interference from the previous, still-vivid

activity’

‘switching costs’

P 133 The Shallows

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The genre issue

‘We are what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.’Marshall McLuhan – Canadian communications theorist

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Reading on line – its drawbacks...

• it encourages speed rather than care in reading

• there are numerous in built distractions• authorship and purpose are often unclear• short, informal text formats predominate• users are not exposed to the longer text

types that they may be required to write themselves

• in comparison, plain text on a page can seem flat and uninspiring

• search engines reduce the need for readers to classify information under heading

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Is Google Making Us Stupid?

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Is Google Making Us Stupid?

http://www.youtube.com/v/W86P_FX6PdI