Subject:
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Re: The value of reading (was: If you could leave any book on Kjeld's nightstand...)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Tue, 26 Mar 2002 11:50:50 GMT
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Viewed:
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1403 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John P. Henderson writes:
> Most of the things we read in print are either journalism or text-books.
I'm not sure that we can generalize like that. Most of what _I_ read is
non-fiction designed to teach a person how to do something (use the
perl split() function, plant bamboo, teach the philosophy of appropriate
technology, etc.) A close second would be conversational newsgroups (here
and elsewhere).
I would guess that John Q. Public reads much less than I do and mostly reads
the newspaper and pop novels...discounting our common everyday reading like
menus, signs, and advertisements.
> The former rarely provides more than does broadcast journalism (IMHO).
But you do have more choice about which topics to spend time on...for now.
> Books, although capable of much greater depth,
You go into this more farther down (and so will I), but I wanted to point out
here that your assertion is far from proven. I certainly wouldn't say that as
a medium, the written word is "capable of much greater depth" than moving
pictures on a box.
> Television (at least what I have seen of it) does have a fair share of useless
> entertainment,
Oh Yeah! I couldn't agree more strongly. I don't receive TV service where I
live now, but I have been a part of the TV culture in the past and I'm
satisfied that I'm missing nothing.
All that said, I would never suggest or support that this is a fault of the
medium. It is a fault (maybe, at least an attribute) of our culture. The
technology of TV could deliver information better than books do.
> If you watch documentaries (such as
> those presented by the Discovery networks) you are likely to get a rudimentary
> overview of a subject, and at best a peaked interest in a particular topic.
Why at best? I think a good documentary makes a subject that you would never
have chosen to read about (because of the time commitment) interesting enough
to learn about. This might spark you to learn more, or it might not. And why
couldn't a documentary film document all there is to know about a subject and
make you one of the world's foremost experts?
> But the advantages of T.V. pretty much end there. For those whose interest is
> sparked on a topic, books (true text books, not print journalism) can provide
> a far greater depth of knowledge.
As the two media are currently implemented. This is still not at all inherent
in the media. For the same reason that hypertext is superior to print, motion
picture media is superior. When using the fully gammut of technologies
employed on the web, the possibilities for instruction and learning are far and
away superior to a text book.
> An hour long documentary on Discovery can
> often be found in just the summary of one chapter of a book.
That's ridiculous. That hour of documentary must be covering additional stuff,
or in more depth, or broader focus, or with a different eye. The medium simply
presents _more_ information per unit of time than reading can. Reading a book
won't give you lots of knowledge that the documentary must be.
> For most people,
> that's all the information they need about Killer Asteroids or the Secrets of
> Demolition or How Plants Grow. But for true knowledge, only a book can go
> beyond that. If you have interest, and if you have a little more time, I
> recommend you read the book...
Or watch more documentaries? What is more valuable to learning a specific
subject about which you know nothing? Watching two one-hour documentaries or
reading for only two hours? I'd say that the former will probably better
acquaint you with the subject.
What can your book do about showing live microscopy of plant cell division? A
series of stills? Forget about it. What better gets a feel for the effects of
an asteroid striking a planet -- a text description or a visual show with
voiceover? And if you're going to demolish skyscrapers, diagrams of where to
place the charges accomanying descriptions and a single still of the results
are OK, but how about several films showing the varying fall characteristics as
the buildings implode after detonation?
> So reading in general is not key to learning, but it does open up a greater
> knowledge. Only through reading about a subject can a person become an expert
> on it.
In general, today, that's true. But only because of our cultural bias (and
maybe expense, actually). It isn't inherent in the media. And to assert so
definitively shorts what should be active research into alternative
instructional media.
> But reading does provide one other important thing (as implied in some of the
> earlier posts): communication skills.
Reading, to the astute, does provide written communications skills.
Just as listening to narration and watching television dialog teaches oral
communications skills.
> Television is usually fast paced...[which] lends toward smaller
> vocabulary, frequent use of buzz words, and an increase in
> unprofessional terms and grammer.
So you're basically saying TV is a great tool for learning to communicate with
your peers. I guess you'd have to somehow demonstrate to me that the negative
traits you are associating with TV viewing actually do correlate somehow.
> Those who read, be
> it non-fiction texts or novels, are far more likely to have a firm grasp of
> their language.
Written, not spoken. Our habits for the two are substantially different.
> Such skill goes beyond mere vocabulary and grammer as it
> acutally impacts the reader's ability to formulate thoughts, reason through
> arguments, and present their beliefs in logical, intelligent, and sometimes
> impressive ways.
Do you actually have a reason to believe this, or is it a hunch?
> This is where (IMO), reading is important. Would I have been
> able to write all I just did, here in this forum, had I never read a book?
Surely not. But you would be able to have spoken it. And what if we could all
hear it. Isn't it just as much communication? What if you spoke the idea and
a machine translated it to text?
Chris
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