The article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” written by Nicholas Carr takes on the challenges and arguments circulating around current day society’s dependence on the internet and technology. Carr identifies the issues he personally has experienced as well as taking the opinions of his colleagues and other bloggers, specifically encompassing the challenge of concentration levels that arise with the current dependency on the web to obtain practically all information. He argues that this generation as well as other generations that are beginning to submerge themselves into the use of the internet are increasingly losing the ability to focus on lengthy articles and often resort to skimming the texts. Carr also mentions that the internet has absorbed all other mediums, becoming the universal medium for this generation causing us to pull away from printed literature and focus on the convenience of surfing the web for all answers with the push of a button. The article also suggests our society has disengaged ourselves from deeper, mindful reading and instead we now become distracted by ad pop-ups and embedded links making it difficult to concentrate on one text at a time for a lengthy period. Additionally, the hypertext Luminous Airplanes written by Paul La Farge exhibits the ideas Carr speaks about regarding immersing ourselves completely into the technological world. The online novel, a digital version of the printed text, is a hyper romance involving multiple stories and pathways to take via a map in which the reader is able to choose what branch they wish to follow. The narrator, a young man working for a printing company, focuses his stories on the route of his conflict which is his Aunt Celeste’s death on 9/11 and the events that follow this tragedy.
While reading Luminous Airplanes I found myself understanding and potentially agreeing with Nicholas Carr’s arguments. As I began to explore the map given by La Farge, selecting the branch I wanted to follow, and starting to read the electronic pages, I realized that I continuously began to skim the text and I was not comprehending what I was reading. One thing I found most relevant to Carr’s ideas was that I was distracted, specifically by the embedded links he included such as “a real cave in Kentucky” included on page three of the “Mcfail's Cave 1” chapter as well as the other tabs I had opened. I felt as though I was unable to immerse myself into the story and the embedded links added into the electronic text were a bit unnecessary and hard to follow their purpose besides providing extra information that did not really contribute to the story in my opinion. Carr mentions in his article, “when the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is re-created in the Net’s image. It injects the medium’s contents with hyperlinks, blinking ads, and other digital gewgaws, and it surrounds the content with the content of all other media it has absorbed.” (paragraph 21) Although there were no “blinking ads,” I found that the hyperlinks embedded into the hypertext as well as the platform I was reading the novel on took away from the plot of the story as opposed to reading the text in its printed form.
In the two hours I had taken the time to read Luminous Airplanes, I had only explored 9% of the text and still did not understand what the plot of the story was. Personally, I would consider myself to be a sufficiently fast reader and with printed copies I find myself being able to sit down and focus on hundreds of pages within that time frame. After reading the chapter “Mara” I had reached what La Farge called a “dead end” causing me to have to click back to the map and decide which branch I desired to take next, which was a bit frustrating. The incorporation of the “dead ends” made it difficult to focus on what the story was actually about. Did the relevance of the previous story completely cease? Would there be any connection with that story in future chapters? I feel that in a printed copy these questions would be more straightforwardly answered and there would likely be no “dead ends,” but I suppose I would have to read the printed copy to properly come to that conclusion.
Although I personally did not enjoy reading Luminous Airplanes in this format, I do believe it offers substantial content that a printed text could not. For instance, with the inclusion of the hyperlinks, readers are able to learn more about additional information that may not be completely relevant to the story but could provide interesting content to the reader. I suppose this could be incorporated into a printed version through annotations but personally I found myself more inclined to click on the embedded links than I typically am to read the annotations included at the bottom of a page in a printed book. Additionally, I find the convenience of the online text to be quite beneficial to have the ability to access the story in this platform. Although I see faults with online reading as Carr does, specifically in terms of lack of concentration due to multiple distractions, I also find benefits in this platform that could not be achieved in a printed copy, such as the ability to choose your destination and what stories you wish to read, getting lost in the map as the author encourages his readers to do.
After reading both the hypertext and the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” I am left with multiple questions for both authors. For Paul La Farge: Is there one format that you prefer in terms of the hypertext vs. The printed copy? What is your reasoning for incorporating the map within the hypertext? Do you see any faults in the electronic version that make it confusing for the reader? For Nicholas Carr: How do you view hypertexts such as Luminous Airplanes? Do you believe they serve any benefits in comparison to printed versions? Alongside each of these questions, I hope to explore the implications of resorting to hypertexts and away from printed copies, especially as someone who prefers printed copies. I will attempt to read more hypertexts in the near future that differ from Luminous Airplanes to see if my experience differs and if I possibly enjoy reading in this format more than I had expected. I would also like to explore the printed version of Luminous Airplanes to identify if the hypertext significantly differs in my understanding of the plot.
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