Apologies for the unannounced two week break. Had to do it!
Guess what? Americans are really into TV.
At least according to a new Nielsen survey on television viewing habits.
What’s interesting to me is the increase in the number of people viewing TV via a Digital Video Recording (DVR) device (my preferred viewing option). 80 million people use these devices to watch programs, a 37% increase from the previous year. Personally, I think the DVR is rewiring my brain. I mostly watch sports and documentaries on TV. Instead of tolerating the lulls in a sporting event (i.e. the 46 minutes of a basketball game you need to sit through to get to the final two minutes), I can zip through to the “good stuff.” I watched this past year’s SuperBowl on my DVR with my trusty “30 second skip” button. I didn’t have to sit through one huddle! Soccer? Fast forward until the ball is in the opponent’s attacking half. I call this the squirrel approach to media consumption where we furiously crack open and discard the shell to get to the nut.
What effect must this be having on our students? Why should they read original sources? Imagine Habermas with a 30 second skip! I had a fascinating conversations with my students who were upset that I had them read something “boring.” Their general point was that the author never got to the point. They wanted to know what was relevant from the passage so they could move on to the next nut… pursuit.
I wonder how much of this is affecting academia? Are we divorced from these larger social trends? Or are we reading more and more to “pull out the nut” rather than to be taken in new, unexpected directions from a provocative argument?
(HT: Lifehacker)
Comments 3
Kenneth M. Kambara — May 22, 2009
Interesting post. I think that few academics are good at evaluating nuts. Some just prefer a steady diet of the same thing. "Sorry, I'm a cashew guy...get those filberts away from me."
As educators, I think it's hard to "sell" things to students. I think there are only so many instances where we can relate excerpts of Debord to the Superbowl or Sontag's "Notes on Camp" to Family Guy & South Park. Here's a question. I tend to focus on making connections of ideas/concepts, often at the expense of covering more topics. Am I doing students a disservice? Fewer nuts, but finding the relationship b/t nuts.
so... — May 22, 2009
When I was in college (early 90's) I was like this for anything that was difficult to read or in a subject I didn't care much about. I love philosophy, but I can't read a philosopher's writing to save my life - I just can't get it. If you explain it to me I get it immediately. (I can't read Shakespeare either...might as well be translating Latin.)
Now I guess the question is, is that worse now than it was then? I think it might be, but not sure if it is the fault of DVRs or the internet. The internet tends to give you things that are shorter in length, so someone has to get to the point faster. I think this may have done more damage to me personally than the DVR, esp as I've been online much longer than I've used a DVR (though that has changed my brain too, just not for reading...anyone ever want to playback real life??).
rkatclu — May 27, 2009
I recently revisited Adler's How to Read a Book and was struck by the section on "inspectional" reading. It encourages a 'skipping', highlight-oriented heuristic and superficial reading. The idea is to get the big picture. Much like introductory textbooks, one gains a cohesive overview at the expense of depth. Otherwise, one often gets bogged down and can't see the forest for the trees (a problem exacerbated by poor writing or reading habits). Apropos of the previous commenter, the authors use Shakespeare as an example:
The tremendous pleasure that can come from reading Shakespeare, for instance, was spoiled for generations of high school students who were forced to go through Julius Caesar, As You Like It, or Hamlet, scene by scene, looking up all the strange words in a glossary and studying all the scholarly footnotes. As a result, they never really read a Shakespearean play. By the time they reached the end, they had forgotten the beginning and lost sight of the whole. Instead of being forced to take this pedantic approach, they should have been encouraged to read the play at one sitting and discuss what they got out of that first quick reading. Only then would they have been ready to study the play carefully and closely because then they would have understood enough of it to learn more. (Source: Google Books)
Reading a work in linear sequential order is kind of like trying to put together pieces of a puzzle without any idea of what the whole looks like.
Using a summarize-expand-review framework when writing or speaking is one way of addressing this issue. (Abstracts, e.g.)
On a technological note, the internet has helped address some of the restraints of traditional mediums by facilitating referencing (in-text hyperlinked keywords or citations, e.g.). At the same time, some have suggested that the digital deluge is "re-wiring" us to be "inspectional" readers all the time.