08 Unlecture

Some points to come out of this week’s unlecture:

– A hyper textual mode of reading. This point struck a chord, because the way we read (particularly the way we read academic essays and the like) is seeming to shift towards this. I don’t, and I haven’t many many who do, choose to read these texts as a whole, from start to finish. Instead, I may read a paragraph, or a sentence, stumble upon a concept that interests me, leave the essay to do my own research on said concept, before returning again. I may find a word that baffles me, and choose to look it up, or I may just have had enough of the essay, and choose to come back it to it later. It seems similar to the way we use the Internet. Most of us, when researching or just browsing, don’t specifically head towards a certain site, use it, and leave – we travel from one link to another, opening multiple tabs to keep track, jumping from page to page. On a more basic level, I remember when I was a kid reading books that were slightly too difficult for me, I’d constantly have to leave the book to look up words I didn’t understand, before attempting to use these words in sentences that made sense to me, or altogether replace them with simpler ones. An early form of a hyper textual mode of reading, perhaps?

– The importance of linking to others. I found this note interesting because it’s something I didn’t know. I had no idea that google results were ranked in this manner, but it makes perfect sense. Adrian’s mentioned the idea of a ‘reputation network’ quite a lot, and it’s clear that the idea of linking to others and building that reputation, and building those connections is vital to the network.