Don’t Speak Up Takach January 15, 2020
Jeff Atwood’s blog post “Because Reading is Fundamental” speaks to individuals who have grown up alongside the internet and the dawn of social media. He addresses Millennials and Gen Z’s as we depend greatly on the use of technology and the internet for many things including communication. As time goes on, students in high school and post-secondary struggle with shortened attention spans as they are easily distracted, from even the simplest of tasks.
Jeff Atwood draws readers into his post by establishing that placing a number beside someone’s name encourages the individual to do whatever it takes to increase this number. Atwood’s introduction is highly effective because many young social media users feel pressured to increase their number of posts, followers, likes and even friends when it comes to online appearances. In reality, Atwood says that posting more does not equal superior communication and the more time spent on number-driven apps, the more it influences us to rely on numbers for our worth within society.
Jeff Atwood says that, “the best conversations are with people who spend most of their time listening.” He believes that we should read more because reading is listening, and it is a fundamental skill that we have forgotten about. Atwood proves this point well by featuring The Ars Banana Experiment by Ars Technica. This test demonstrates that less than 90% of people fully read an article before making a comment about the post. In this experiment, Technica instructed readers in the seventh paragraph to add the word “banana” in their response if they had read that far in the post. As it turns out, “banana” was not mentioned until the 93rd comment. This perfectly proves Atwood’s point and establishes that many are losing the ability to listen and read for that matter, when it comes to communication with technology.
Secondly, Atwood features The Slate experiment by Farhad Manjoo which shows that even when the title of an article dares the readers to read until the end, most of them still won’t. Analytics confirmed that the largest percentage of readers only read 50% of the article, even when the title taunted that they wouldn’t read the entire post. Not only does Atwood provide well documented sources to backs up his idea, both experiments prove that his theory has become a larger problem than we may realize.
Atwood addresses the issue and says that we must incentivize reading instead of talking. He suggests we remove pagination online because it creates barriers when reading. He also advises displaying read times instead of number of clicks to promote thorough reading. Also, Atwood advocates rewards for reading long posts which in turn, could reinforce listening in a positive way. Finally, he notes that the online world should give people a chance to catch up before being jolted to the next new thing. Atwood suggests that online feeds enable pausing so that people may finish reading to promote listening as an essential part of communication.
When we communicate with people from a distance online, it is easy to have miscommunications because we are unable to clarify and gage facial expressions face to face. Social media most definitely reduces time and space although, we are definitely reaching a point of major disruption. Atwood’s post explains thoroughly why slowdown is necessary and uses sources to back up his claims. He encourages us younger generations to rethink the way our brains are being wired because faster is not always better. Atwood argument is convincing, and it is clear that reading will make us better listeners and in turn, better communicators.
No comments:
Post a Comment