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What's happening to reading?

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Re: What's happening to reading?

#321

Post by smeej »

watwut wrote: post #210
hellisothers wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many people are so aware they can't that they will refuse to try. Of the ones that do, you will struggle to find one who can read the text with anything like the fluidity or inflection they would use to speak the same words Is this tru’ish? I’m not refuting it I’m just a little shocked this might be the situation we’re in. I know generally people now struggle to consume long form content but it even being able to r…

A weirdo approaches you with a highly unusual request. You suspect the goal is to humiliate you or make you into a dummy somehow, which is actually their goal. No thanks. > I know generally people now struggle to consume long form content but it even being able to read a story? There is reading and then there is reading an unknown text out loud in public while being judged. The two are not the same thing. I had to re…

Way to miss the forest for the trees. "The grocery store" is just "a place people from a wide variety of backgrounds have to go to." Nobody's talking about actually accosting people to give them tests. The point is that everyday people would struggle with this task if they weren't specifically prepared for it.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#322

Post by smeej »

conductr wrote: post #234
wiseowise wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You overlooked one crucial fact. > I had to learn the hard way 15 years ago that the average American adult cannot parse a full-page email in standard English. It seemed crazy to me at the time and seems crazy to me now, given that the average adult has completed elementary school, but most people are barely functionally literate at all. They can, they just won't, because they don't give a fucking shit. The moment yo…

This. If someone sends me a full page email, I immediately skip it. No time for that. They'll follow up more concisely when it becomes important. Or if it requires such elaborate description, a phone call or meeting would have probably been a better channel for this communication. Likewise, anytime I start typing an email and it gets lengthy I know I'd be better off picking up the phone/scheduling a call.

The great thing about sending it in an email is the record.

If you insist on hammering it out in a meeting, somebody still needs to record the details or you can renege on whichever parts didn't suit you later. And if you wait until it gets more and more terse, you can come back later and accuse the other person of not having given you enough detail.

Email is an excellent tool for the job when details matter.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#323

Post by smeej »

photonthug wrote: post #191
mvdtnz wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that you're greatly overstating the point. > But walk into any average grocery store and hand someone a page out of a book and ask them to read it out loud to you. I doubt that you have done this, but if you have please stop doing it. This is literal insane behaviour.

I don't know. Talking with strangers is always kind of insane, or at least a pretty illogical leap of faith, because there's not much chance that the interaction is interesting or amusing. Now a stranger that walks up to me and demands some dramatic reading of Paradise Lost, stat? Ok, I'm intrigued, hold my beer and buckle up while I let you hear about regions of sorrow and darkness visible because the produce sectio…

Talking with strangers in a shared cultural space like a grocery store is one of the most normal occurrences in the history of humanity.

It is incredibly telling that it strikes you as "always kind of insane."

Re: What's happening to reading?

#324

Post by _dain_ »

jraph wrote: post #181
smeej wrote: post #145

I'm not sure what's happening, but I am sure it isn't new. I had to learn the hard way 15 years ago that the average American adult cannot parse a full-page email in standard English. It seemed crazy to me at the time and seems crazy to me now, given that the average adult has completed elementary school, but most people are barely functionally literate at all. I don't expect you to believe me. It's a weird claim. Bu…

> walk into any average grocery store and hand someone a page out of a book and ask them to read it out loud to you. Many people are so aware they can't that they will refuse to try. Of the ones that do, you will struggle to find one who can read the text with anything like the fluidity or inflection they would use to speak the same words Of course. I would likely find this situation very unsettling, if not stressful…

It's actually not that hard to speak text fluently. You need to practice, but only a little. The trick is to speak a little slower than you read, and pre-emptively flick your eyes to the right, skimming the oncoming text, so you have a buffer of context in your mind. Pause a little more at sentence boundaries; this gives you more headroom and makes you sound more refined. The idea isn't to fully process the future text, but to get a rough sense of where it's going -- a question, a subordinate clause, a list, etc -- so you can adjust your intonation in advance.

As an experiment I spoke your comment aloud as I read it. It sounded natural and I made no mistakes at all.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#325

Post by jraph »

smeej wrote: post #319
jraph wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> walk into any average grocery store and hand someone a page out of a book and ask them to read it out loud to you. Many people are so aware they can't that they will refuse to try. Of the ones that do, you will struggle to find one who can read the text with anything like the fluidity or inflection they would use to speak the same words Of course. I would likely find this situation very unsettling, if not stressful…

I think you're missing the point that most of the things that make this hard for people are also what makes it hard enough for them to read that they won't do it well, even for things like emails. Reading is a skill, and it's not the same as being (technically) literate. For someone who's a competent reader, there's nothing at all more intimidating about being asked to read a page from a book (you can choose the book…

Not convinced.

You'll have to prove that this impromptu reading out loud experiment indeed tests the agility to parse a text.

I believe you won't succeed because I think it's wrong.

I also believe this potato and recipe conversation in a supermarket won't unsettle many people, including people who can't cook.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#326

Post by KPGv2 »

libraryatnight wrote: post #102
KPGv2 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> New modalities of presentation will make media more accessible to a wider audience, so they can benefit and learn from it, even if some of the magic is lost in translation. I think a flaw in your argument here is that you're dismissing the possibility that specific expression of an idea is the modality. Consider, for example, summarizing a poem. You aren't just losing some magic. You're losing the entire point .

Most people aren't getting the point anyway. The surface idea was always enough for them. It's a hard-knock life when you realize you're staring into the blank face of a man for whom science fiction is just war in space with cooler guns and aliens. In the US, it's a culture of point missing. From Punisher Skull tattoos on our police to racist Star Trek fans, missing the point is mostly what the people around you are…

> Most people aren't getting the point anyway

shades of "i'm so deep compared to the other kids in my school"

Re: What's happening to reading?

#327

Post by TeMPOraL »

bumby wrote: post #318
TeMPOraL wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point, and a thing to remember. However, wrt. to what I wrote, my experience is mostly based on hanging out in places and reading comments on topics I understand to some degree - somewhere between an informed amateur and a relative expert, depending on specific topics. There are also some factors that help compensate for Gell-Mann amnesia effect: - Comments are conversations -- in a quality community, l…

I think that makes sense, but it implies the quality is really a function of the curation. That’s true regardless of the forum, though; I can have a high quality Twitter feed by carefully curating it, but that doesn’t mean Twitter is an inherently high-quality forum.

s/curation/moderation/, and then it works for forums. Case in point, HN.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#328

Post by [deleted] »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #327
bumby wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that makes sense, but it implies the quality is really a function of the curation. That’s true regardless of the forum, though; I can have a high quality Twitter feed by carefully curating it, but that doesn’t mean Twitter is an inherently high-quality forum.

s/curation/moderation/, and then it works for forums. Case in point, HN.

[deleted]

Re: What's happening to reading?

#329

Post by photonthug »

smeej wrote: post #323
photonthug wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. Talking with strangers is always kind of insane, or at least a pretty illogical leap of faith, because there's not much chance that the interaction is interesting or amusing. Now a stranger that walks up to me and demands some dramatic reading of Paradise Lost, stat? Ok, I'm intrigued, hold my beer and buckle up while I let you hear about regions of sorrow and darkness visible because the produce sectio…

Talking with strangers in a shared cultural space like a grocery store is one of the most normal occurrences in the history of humanity. It is incredibly telling that it strikes you as "always kind of insane."

Huh? I defended your proposal of asking strangers to read stuff against the detractors here, because even though it's a bit obnoxious, I think it's a more interesting conversational gambit than discussing sports or something. And now I'm the weirdo? You attack your allies here in a way that raises questions about your own ability to read well.

Re: What's happening to reading?

#330

Post by jraph »

_dain_ wrote: post #324
jraph wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> walk into any average grocery store and hand someone a page out of a book and ask them to read it out loud to you. Many people are so aware they can't that they will refuse to try. Of the ones that do, you will struggle to find one who can read the text with anything like the fluidity or inflection they would use to speak the same words Of course. I would likely find this situation very unsettling, if not stressful…

It's actually not that hard to speak text fluently. You need to practice, but only a little. The trick is to speak a little slower than you read, and pre-emptively flick your eyes to the right, skimming the oncoming text, so you have a buffer of context in your mind. Pause a little more at sentence boundaries; this gives you more headroom and makes you sound more refined. The idea isn't to fully process the future te…

Fully agree.
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