lister question G

What do you understand by ‘non-linear, non-sequential reading and writing?’

It will be interesting to note what will happen to the future of learning, reading and understanding texts, with the rise of ‘new’ media. The ‘linear’ form of a book appears constraining when compared to the seemingly infinite choices we have on the internet. As discussed in the lecture, books have only one (rational) available method of reading, which is turning the page, however new media opens up reading, allowing the reader to look at only the relevant or interesting parts of the text, or pinpointing a specific subject. This non-linear way of reading and writing has been described in Lister et al. as “multi-linear” (Lister et al, 2003:27). This phenomenon “threatens to overturn the organisation and management of knowledge as we have known to date”, whilst this view is extreme, I think that the future of reading and writing will be very different to the ways in which we have learned them in the past, and perhaps new skills will be required to keep up to date with new media technologies.