John Miedema

How the Web Works for Readers: Thin Connections Lead to Rich Connections

8 November 2009 4 Comments

This entry is part 26 of 45 in the series I, Reader

Birth of the Reader-Hacker, Pt 1.

The web and print books are both technologies, each serving reading in its own way. The web and its associated reading devices lend themselves to scanning and reading short pieces. But there is a qualitative difference between the scanning we do on the web, and the long-form reading we do with print books. It is possible in principle to read long-form on the web, but it is an inferior technology for doing so. Print is also a technology, evolved over centuries. It is a superior technology for long-form reading.

So how do readers, seeking long-form reading, benefit from the web?

Every day I scan about 200 RSS feeds. I don’t sit for an hour and read them one by one. My iGoogle home page has Google Reader embedded in it. Each time I open browser for any number of reasons, I do a quick scan of the titles. If anything catches my eye, I look further into it. Sometimes I catch a wave, and surf from item to item until it runs dry. If I find something very good, I bookmark it. Once in a while I find a book that is worth reading. I either put it on my “toread” list, place a hold on it the library, or purchase it from a book store. People use the web differently, but I think this pattern is fairly typical. It is a pattern moving from thin connections on the web to rich connections in print books.

The shift from thin connections to rich connections is how quantity translates to quality. The pattern mimics the operation of our brain. When we want to understand a new idea, our brain does not yet have complex neuronal connections. We try a new skill or try to wrap our heads around a new idea. Simple neuronal connections begin to form. As we rehearse and learn more, the quantity and complexity of connections grows. This is a measurable phenomenon in our brain. It is seen more widely in the universe; things evolve by moving from a simple state to a complex state. That the web mimics this pattern is predictable since the web is an extension of mind.

The thin connections of the web increase the likelihood of finding rich connections in print books. We are more likely to find good books given the web and its poor connections than if we didn’t have them.

Series Navigation«The Web is Re-Wiring My BrainThe Accidental Programmer»

4 Comments »

Wendell said:

“I do a quick scan of the titles. If anything catches my eye, I look further”

Me, too. And then I think about the value of titles. Should they be catchy? Explanatory? Summary Conclusions? How many characters are effective (some lists cut off after about 30)?

I’m thinking this is journalism 101 stuff: how to write a headline and lead (“lede”?).

Then I look at the state of today’s newspapers and think, we’d better do something a little different – LOL.

# 8 November 2009 at 2:54 pm

barbara said:

I do the same thing…Google reader takes me quickly through the mass of topics to the things I am interested in, which then slows me down and lets me have more of a quality read. That sometimes (too often) takes me to deeper ideas, more concrete things (like books and articles) and then I have a stack of books and articles which takes me into the deep places hidden in my soul (or just to something that is fun and interesting).

The problem is time. If we could stop time, or speed up the experience we get from reading, without causing the experience to be degraded…then would be we supermen.

# 9 November 2009 at 12:27 am

John (author) said:

Placeholder comment. When I get to it, I need to add a point somewhere about ’status’ information on the web, and identity issues related to it. I haven’t found the right place for the point, so I’ll just leave it as a comment here. More of me using this blog like a wiki …

I watch status bars in progress. I wait for a page to load, for an email to be scanned, for a download to finish. Perhaps I click away to the next thing, pretending to multi-task. There really is no such thing as multi-tasking, only rapid alternations of uni-tasking, each alternation costing attention that could have been spent on the first task. But the web makes us wait. If the world opened a million copies of a book at once, we would all be reading. If we opened a million copies of a web page at once, the website would crash. So we wait. Watching status bars feels good. It’s a fix. Status seems like progress. Check out my blog stats. Web counters are the mirror of Snow White, telling us who is the greatest of them all. It is MacLuhan’s narcissistic trap, a fantasy of self as famous.

# 17 November 2009 at 1:58 pm

John (author) said:

Looks like we’re getting another tsunami of e-book enthusiasm in 2010, everyone proclaiming it the year of the e-book.

I’m trying to be open-minded about it all, even getting a Kindle for Christmas.

But I can’t shake the thought that print books are the better technology for reading anything of length or substance. Snippets, okay on the web. Essay, maybe on a Kindle. But a whole book, I mean a real book? One with challenging ideas?

Am I just old school here? Maybe all the tidbits and scraps of information can substitute for a deep read …

Nah. Have tags ever replaced categories? Not.

# 3 December 2009 at 1:43 pm