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.