Re: Too many printouts

["B. Silk" <bsilk@titan.iwu.edu>]

On Mon, 22 Jan 1996, Neal Lerner wrote:
[snip]
> So I'm wondering just what it is about the medium that disturbs me so, 
> and I'm wondering if I'm alone in such feelings.  How many of you folks 
> will zap messages that require you to hit the space bar or whatever 
> mechanism is required to advance one screen full of text?  And I'm 
> wondering simply what the skills might be that allows someone to deal 
> skillfully with such things (and perhaps how I can learn them?).

When I read to make meaning--to think--I read with a pen in my hand.  I 
draw arrows and underline, make comments in the margin, note significant 
points in my own handwriting at the top of the page for quick reference 
when I begin dealing with the text as a whole.  I don't do this with 
student papers, but I would like to.

When I am reading to think, I frequently pause, look up from the text,
unfocus my eyes, let the two hemispheres of my brain bounce thoughts back
and forth. 

But when I read text on a computer screen I cannot hold a pen, draw
arrows, make comments in the margin, or engage the right brain hemisphere
in common ways.  For me, reading a computer screen is very much left brain
only. 

If I look away from the text, my eyes must adjust--sometimes painfully,
always with awareness, because, as Jeanne said, we are looking at light
when we look at a computer screen. 

And reading at a computer changes my self-context, alters my space.  If I
look away, the computer sits there humming insistently, persistently. 
It's wide, unblinking eye demands that I meet its gaze.  (Have you noticed
how people's eyes are drawn to that glowing eye when the computer is on in
your office?  Have you noticed how it draws their gaze away from yours as
though it were upstaging you, or as though it were a child demanding
attention?)  Reading text on a computer screen wearies me in ways that
reading other texts does not. 

Which is not to say that I don't sometimes spend hours a day reading text
on a screen--and being thrilled at the technology that lets it happen. 

  --Bobbie


   Bobbie Silk
   Illinois Wesleyan University
   P.O. Box 2900                  
   Bloomington, IL  61702-2900     
   (PH:  309/556-3085)
   email:  bsilk@titan.iwu.edu