On Feb 27, 2009, at 15:12 , Godfrey DiGiorgi wrote:
What no reader device can replace ... aside from the obvious things
that Marnie suggested, is the feel and smell of paper. Of the cover.
Of turning a page. Or the little notes jotted in the margins of a
print or book by a previous owner, a sense of passage through time.
A book, like a fine photographic print, is tactile - is a part of
the living world - not just a conveyance for information storage and
display. I use computers to find, manipulate, collate, arrange,
assess, and obtain information. But I can't read a book on a display.
Whether they go the way of all things or not is not a question ...
it ain't called that for nothin' ... but it will be a different
world in which books no longer exist. Happily, I don't think I'll be
around for that world.
Have to agree with Godfrey and Marnie on this, even though I hardly
ever read a book or a manual, only magazines, in fits and starts. It
is much harder to read anything of length online (you cannot change
your position much, especially if you wear glasses) and hard on the
eyes to read books on handheld devices. I know, I've tried since the
Casio, Newton, through my Palm Tungsten C, and now my iTouch. The
latter is the best so far, but I can't read for any length of time on
it. Too many distractions.
It takes me 3 to 5 hours a day to keep up with the PDML traffic.
Longer if you sweet folks refer me to YouTube or someone's site with
hundreds of photos, or a jump to yet another site.
This is because of my ADHD. Book, PDML, or PDA, I can't concentrate
for long enough to get through a whole chapter. If I push, I can read
a half dozen chapters, but frequently when I come across something
that requires knowledge of what's come before, I have to go back and
re-read to figure it out. Or give up on it. If I'm just reading for
enjoyment, I can find myself not remembering what was on the page
before. This is not like dementia or "loss of memory", but the fact
that in almost every sentence I read, something will remind me of
something else I've done, thought, planned, written, or seen, and my
mind will jump to that track, requiring me to force myself to go back
until I recognize the context of where I was taking it in unimpeded.
Mine is called "Adult Onset Attention Deficit Disorder" and wormed
it's way into my life big time when I was in my mid-40s. There were
some indicators when I was a schoolchild, but my thirst for reading
and knowledge overcame it "where I was interested in the subject",
which is not the same as being motivated. I could not be motivated by
any means is it did not fascinate me. And I was very interested in
science and science fiction, burning through books at a rate of 3 to 9
a week. I spent most of my life from my teens until then self-
medicating with coffee and cigarettes, the former replacing the
"speed" I now take, the latter providing major distraction allowing me
to stay on track by having multiple things to do at once. As I type
this I have the news on TV, iTunes playing some jazz down low, and
tapping my teeth together to an unknown ditty that's been with me for
years.
Not that any of you would notice any of this were you in my company.
Unless you tasked me to do something time dependent that I wasn't
interested in. I'm still good for guarding the beer at GFM, as long as
I can listen to Pink Floyd on my iTouch and shoot pictures of pebbles
that are pretty with a macro! :-)
The past 2 hours writing this will give you some idea of the
difficulty, as I've gone and done several other things at the same
time. Not because I needed to, but because those tasks overcame the
flow of writing this. And of course, when I do come back to it, I have
to re-read it, make corrections and perhaps reformat it.
Sorry I dragged you all along with this traipse through and around the
subject of reading, but it was cathartic.
Whiningly yours...
:-)
Bet you'll feel better if you just trash this and move on, readers....
Joseph McAllister
[email protected]
http://gallery.me.com/jomac
http://web.me.com/jomac/show.me/Blog/Blog.html
--
PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List
[email protected]
http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow
the directions.
