Saturday, August 25, 2007
Milblogs
I recently responded to the milblog website. I wish I had known this site existed sooner. The blogs of the soldiers were so touching, sad, and yet had hope in them. I enjoyed reading them immensely; they were so personal and informative. I never thought about contacting soldiers via internet. I felt like I couldn’t say enough to them, and that I couldn’t thank them enough, but I knew that if I were in their shoes, any response would help. I responded to a soldier who had posttraumatic stress disorder and told him how sorry I was and that my prayers were with him. I also read about a soldier whose friend named Ski was in a coma, and how compassionate he was even during combat, but thankfully is back to normal. Reading these blogs renewed my sense of what is actually going on in the world, seeing as how the media has been seemingly slipping slowly away from the war.
Social Websites
The internet has hosted for some time the continually growing sites of myspace.com, facebook.com, and other social sites like it. These sites are enormously popular among teenagers, which has led to large advertising and profits for the sites. Employers as well are cashing in by performing additional background checks on individuals through these sites. Many individuals who use these sites have the delusion that their information is safe and private on these websites.
During my early high school years, I maintained my own MySpace. Like many of my other friends, I assumed that MySpace was a world where only kids communicated and interacted with one another privately. I of course was wrong. I didn’t realize this until one day my mother asked me if I had a MySpace. I told her I did, and she then wished to see it. I was shocked and felt she had no place to see it. Of course she was my mother, and what I felt was no defense against her decision. Thankfully, she had and still has a very limited knowledge of computers, and I was able to remove anything that would be particularly hazardous to my well-being. This experience led me to realize that anyone with a slightly more extensive knowledge of computers than my mother could easily and readily access a wealth of information about me, like who my friends are, where I attend school, and my interests. I was smart enough to not post anything incriminating (not that I ever did anything that I could be incriminated for) or personal (such as phone number, or where I live).
As senior year came along, MySpace became immature with the newly found Facebook. And because it was senior year, students were partying. Under the same delusion of MySpace, students felt that they were safe on Facebook. They were wrong. Pictures from a party appeared with captions suggesting under-aged drinking. The administration stumbled upon these pictures, and immediately suspended students in the pictures. However, my school has a large number of wealthy families, many of which were the families in the photographs. Their lawyers arrived that day in response to this outrageous assumption of illegal activity, in which my school quickly surrendered and recanted.
So is the issue of safety and privacy a serious problem? I don’t believe there is any problem with safety or privacy on these social sites. People who use these websites should have enough common knowledge about them to enjoy them safely. Someone should know that when they access these sites and give information, that information becomes obtainable by the public. Kids should be monitored on their internet activity, and teenagers should be given rules to follow to keep them safe from internet predators. As for employers using these sites for additional background checks, I congratulate their resourcefulness. Even so, Facebook is eliminating some of the problems associated with unwanted viewers by letting the user allow only their friends to view their information. MySpace and others like it are also increasing the privacy settings on their sites. And as more problems materialize, believe the sites themselves will rise to fix these small problems.
During my early high school years, I maintained my own MySpace. Like many of my other friends, I assumed that MySpace was a world where only kids communicated and interacted with one another privately. I of course was wrong. I didn’t realize this until one day my mother asked me if I had a MySpace. I told her I did, and she then wished to see it. I was shocked and felt she had no place to see it. Of course she was my mother, and what I felt was no defense against her decision. Thankfully, she had and still has a very limited knowledge of computers, and I was able to remove anything that would be particularly hazardous to my well-being. This experience led me to realize that anyone with a slightly more extensive knowledge of computers than my mother could easily and readily access a wealth of information about me, like who my friends are, where I attend school, and my interests. I was smart enough to not post anything incriminating (not that I ever did anything that I could be incriminated for) or personal (such as phone number, or where I live).
As senior year came along, MySpace became immature with the newly found Facebook. And because it was senior year, students were partying. Under the same delusion of MySpace, students felt that they were safe on Facebook. They were wrong. Pictures from a party appeared with captions suggesting under-aged drinking. The administration stumbled upon these pictures, and immediately suspended students in the pictures. However, my school has a large number of wealthy families, many of which were the families in the photographs. Their lawyers arrived that day in response to this outrageous assumption of illegal activity, in which my school quickly surrendered and recanted.
So is the issue of safety and privacy a serious problem? I don’t believe there is any problem with safety or privacy on these social sites. People who use these websites should have enough common knowledge about them to enjoy them safely. Someone should know that when they access these sites and give information, that information becomes obtainable by the public. Kids should be monitored on their internet activity, and teenagers should be given rules to follow to keep them safe from internet predators. As for employers using these sites for additional background checks, I congratulate their resourcefulness. Even so, Facebook is eliminating some of the problems associated with unwanted viewers by letting the user allow only their friends to view their information. MySpace and others like it are also increasing the privacy settings on their sites. And as more problems materialize, believe the sites themselves will rise to fix these small problems.
Hyper-reading
The article Hyper-readers and their Reading Engines by James Sosnoski discusses his practices of hyper-reading by defining and explaining the characteristics involved. Hyper-reading is defined by the terms: filtering, skimming, pecking, imposing, filming, trespassing, de-authorizing, and fragmenting. Through defining hyper-reading, Sosnoski defends his practices and shows the benefits on what some view to be hyper-reading’s negative aspects.
Sosnoski begins by pointing out that all reading involves a process of selection. He defends filtering by using an example of a 17th century poetry class, which interpreted a list of names to be a poem. Because readers have a bias of a text based on previous notions such as genre, the reader transforms the text to fit their own expectations. Sosnoski then points out that a search engine selects much like an encyclopedia, except for the technology behind search engines makes them much more thorough and efficient than an encyclopedia.
Next, Sosnoski briefly goes into skimming. Skimming is merely a way of finding the outline of a text. He makes the points that readers rarely remember small details, and after completely reading a text only have a good enough memory for the outline. Skimming in hyper-reading is a necessity, because there is too much available material to be read in a reasonable amount of time. Similarly, Sosnoski goes into discussing pecking, which is merely skimming without forming a structure for your information. Pecking lacks coherence, but this is not a problem to hyper-readers, because they take information and assemble it to cohere to their own wishes, even it the information is used for the author’s intention.
Sosnoski uses imposing to show that the reader and a text play a part in the meaning. The reader controls what text they wish to pursue, and as a result, search to text that contains relevant information. Without the reader, the text holds no significance, only information. Once they utilize the information of the text, they imposed their own meaning into it. Sosnoski points out that films impose text, which is another one of his points; filming. Filming merely transforms textual information into visual information as envisioned through the director and those involved in creating video.
Sosnoski goes on to readily admit that hyper-reading is trespasses, de-authorizes, and fragments texts. Hyper-readers all are guilty of stealing text, and are described as ardent plagiarists. In their burglary, they also de-authorize the text by using it over and over again. When one person credits the source of the information, they really credit another hyper-reader like themselves, who obtained the information from someone else, who likewise received the information from someone else. Except for this process could go further, with the real author losing all relation to the original information. In this process, the reader fragments, or takes the information out of the text, as an organizational tool to assemble many bits of information to support their own coherent purposes.
This eight-element design clearly defines the many steps involved in the hyper-reader’s process of obtaining information. From reading this article, it seemed as if Sosnoski had put a science behind hyper-reading. Like any science, Sosnoski broke down the large picture into small fragments to create a definition and to reveal how the larger picture works. Likewise, he had a logical scientific process, involving hypothesis (theories) based on observations and experiments, from which he came to his conclusions. He also forecasted his own predictions concerning the future of hyper-reading based upon the current circumstances. His paper seemed to successfully cover the essential aspects of hyper-reading, and to inform his audience about the design of hyper-readers and their practices. Sosnoski has created a practice for hyper-reading, and realizing that its not going to disappear anytime soon, has encouraged his readers to partake in the practice and be teachers of hyper-reading. Hyper-reading is a more efficient way to work, and to do our work well, we must simply use the modern tools we have before us.
Sosnoski begins by pointing out that all reading involves a process of selection. He defends filtering by using an example of a 17th century poetry class, which interpreted a list of names to be a poem. Because readers have a bias of a text based on previous notions such as genre, the reader transforms the text to fit their own expectations. Sosnoski then points out that a search engine selects much like an encyclopedia, except for the technology behind search engines makes them much more thorough and efficient than an encyclopedia.
Next, Sosnoski briefly goes into skimming. Skimming is merely a way of finding the outline of a text. He makes the points that readers rarely remember small details, and after completely reading a text only have a good enough memory for the outline. Skimming in hyper-reading is a necessity, because there is too much available material to be read in a reasonable amount of time. Similarly, Sosnoski goes into discussing pecking, which is merely skimming without forming a structure for your information. Pecking lacks coherence, but this is not a problem to hyper-readers, because they take information and assemble it to cohere to their own wishes, even it the information is used for the author’s intention.
Sosnoski uses imposing to show that the reader and a text play a part in the meaning. The reader controls what text they wish to pursue, and as a result, search to text that contains relevant information. Without the reader, the text holds no significance, only information. Once they utilize the information of the text, they imposed their own meaning into it. Sosnoski points out that films impose text, which is another one of his points; filming. Filming merely transforms textual information into visual information as envisioned through the director and those involved in creating video.
Sosnoski goes on to readily admit that hyper-reading is trespasses, de-authorizes, and fragments texts. Hyper-readers all are guilty of stealing text, and are described as ardent plagiarists. In their burglary, they also de-authorize the text by using it over and over again. When one person credits the source of the information, they really credit another hyper-reader like themselves, who obtained the information from someone else, who likewise received the information from someone else. Except for this process could go further, with the real author losing all relation to the original information. In this process, the reader fragments, or takes the information out of the text, as an organizational tool to assemble many bits of information to support their own coherent purposes.
This eight-element design clearly defines the many steps involved in the hyper-reader’s process of obtaining information. From reading this article, it seemed as if Sosnoski had put a science behind hyper-reading. Like any science, Sosnoski broke down the large picture into small fragments to create a definition and to reveal how the larger picture works. Likewise, he had a logical scientific process, involving hypothesis (theories) based on observations and experiments, from which he came to his conclusions. He also forecasted his own predictions concerning the future of hyper-reading based upon the current circumstances. His paper seemed to successfully cover the essential aspects of hyper-reading, and to inform his audience about the design of hyper-readers and their practices. Sosnoski has created a practice for hyper-reading, and realizing that its not going to disappear anytime soon, has encouraged his readers to partake in the practice and be teachers of hyper-reading. Hyper-reading is a more efficient way to work, and to do our work well, we must simply use the modern tools we have before us.
Friday, August 24, 2007
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