Reprise

Eternal knot
Last week I wrote about a study of the information behaviour of the future and the resulting scare headlines about the google generation. John Naughton’s article in the Observer last Sunday gave a more thorough consideration of the findings which made me realise how my own reading was rather hasty. In this book, Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel talk about the emergence of new kinds of reading and this is a good example of what that looks like. Here’s John Naughton: The findings describe 'a new form of information-seeking behaviour' characterised as being 'horizontal, bouncing, checking and viewing in nature. Users are promiscuous, diverse and volatile.' 'Horizontal' information-seeking means 'a form of skimming activity, where people view just one or two pages from an academic site then "bounce" out, perhaps never to return.' The average times users spend on e-book and e-journal sites are very short: typically four and eight minutes respectively. Well that’s so interesting, because that’s exactly what I just did….but then I also returned to the topic from an alternative source, wrote about it and passed it on, links and all! All in all that must count as a case study in new literacy - read, think, write, link, read, think, write, link...