For as long as I can remember I've been a skimmer. Even
before the web there was too much to read, and skimming was the best way
to get the gist of something in order to determine whether it deserved
to be saved, and hopefully read fully at some later date. A former teacher
and mentor, Moshe Caspi, claimed that just as there is reading literacy
- understanding the totality of the printed page, there is also skimming
literacy - being able to quickly grasp the gist of a page, and that this
should be taught in school as well. Yet (I am, after all, a product of
a pre-MTV generation) a love for the printed word was instilled in me and,
though the web is very much my element, I'm hesitant to see reading - real,
word-for-word, taste the sentence structure, reading - become an outmoded,
and out-of-use activity.
Two articles I've read
lately have returned me to this question of browsing as opposed to reading.
One of them, Jakob Nielsen's
Alertbox for October 1, 1997, starts with a sentence which makes me
jealous and wish that I'd written it:
It's true (though unlike Nielsen, I haven't conducted
a study that supports my claim) - people don't read web pages. I'm quite
unsure, however, whether this is due to the fact that they browse and skim
because they're busy and want to find only the information relevant to
them, or simply because reading isn't one of the skills required in the
web ethos, the "web lifestyle".
And that brings me to the second
article that's been cluttering
up my desk lately, an article entitled "I'm ready for the Web lifestyle"
by Bill Gates. After paying lip serivce to the need for faster connections
and eaiser interfaces before a "web lifestyle" will truly be possible,
Gates tells us that he uses the Web (for some reasons he capitalizes the
word) "serveral times a day":
I have no doubt that Bill Gates is a busy person, and
I certainly can't begrudge him for not reading (in the outdated sense of
the word) the web pages he visits. But as a promoter of a "Web lifestyle"
he is also actively playing a part in redefining how we use our reading
skills, and it seems as though the most basic redefinition is in the direction
outlined by Nielsen: Spending more and more time on the web, yet reading
less and less of it. The web continually offers us more and more information,
yet we relate to it less and less in an in-depth fashion, and style seems
to be something totally of the past. We read for content, not for flavor.
This, of course, isn't solely a problem of the web. An
acquaintance is presently taking a course in writing computer software
manuals. He enthuses over the wonderful things he's learning, like the
fact that no sentence should have more than 18 words, and no paragraph
more than two sentences. That's writing for busy people who want to find
the information they need quickly, and don't want to be bothered by style,
but I greatly doubt that it makes for interesting reading.
Translated to the web it offers a
lot of clicking (which is great fun), yet still maintains linearity. It
doesn't invite networking which assumes a certain degree of ambivalence
and even redundance. So we'll click from page to page, greatly enjoying
the experience, but we'll miss out on the web's greatest promise. When
we read actively we not only uncover the intended meaning of the text;
we participate in the generation of new meanings. "Web lifestyle" reading
is one-dimensional, while active reading encourages multi-dimensional understandings
and interpretations. As Lewis Thomas put it, human language has the
capacity of encouraging ambiguity. That's a wonderful possibility on
the web, but only if we allow ourselves to really read.
That's it for this edition. Reactions and suggestions
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From the Boidem -
an occasional column on computers and information technologies in everyday
life
December 20, 1997*:
Half a year ago, around the summer solstice (which deserves
links, but not at the moment) I tried my hand at comparing
the web to a printed page. Among the numerous points of comparison,
I alluded only cursorily to the question of reading web pages, with the
sentence:
Often I get the feeling that web pages are purposefully prepared to
be skimmed, with the clear objective of finding a link and clicking on
it.
That wasn't the first time I tried to examine the "non-reading"
atmosphere that the web seems to encourage. The question of skimming, or
browsing, was one
of the first topics I tried to deal with in this column. In that column
I referred to a column
by Nicholas Negroponte in Wired magazine in which Negroponte critiqued
the idea of browsing, saying that he didn't have time for window shopping
because he had to get serious work done:
But browsing takes time - the one thing most of us don't have. For
example, I do far less window-shopping than I did when I was young (and
yes, I miss it). Undeniably, browsing can be fun and useful but, as with
tourism, only so much and so often. Funny how we use the words cruising
and surfing to describe our behavior on the Web.
It was strange to me then that Negroponte would see browsing
as a time-consuming, even a time-wasting, activity. After all, browsing
is something you do because you don't have time for comprehensive reading.
Seemingly you browse in order to save time. But Negroponte, who realized
that there was real value in browsing, all the same seemed to be saying
that browsing was a luxury for which we no longer have the time.
How Users Read on the Web
Nielsen then explains:
They don't.
People rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page,
picking out individual words and sentences. In a recent study John Morkes
and I found that 79 percent of our test users always scanned any new page
they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word.
Nielsen approaches an important issue in a very common sense
manner, but, though at first glance he seems to be decrying the demise
of reading, it turns out that his basic interest is the development of
effective web pages for busy people who have to find important information.
So what at first seems like a complaint turns out to be a basic premise
to be dealt with in order to design and write web pages in such a way that
users (I guess we can't call them "readers" anymore) can get the most out
of them.
I check it for weather, traffic conditions and sports scores. Even
if I go to a sports event, I check a couple of Web sites afterward to read
the analysis. I use the Web to watch investments and to buy books and gifts.
Soon I'll use it to pay my bills.
So Bill Gates uses the Web daily, and is concerned with the
development of a web lifestyle. Judging from his own description, reading
isn't a central activity at the web pages he visits. On the contrary, the
uses he finds for the web are of a sort that hardly demand high school
proficiency in reading.