Melvin Kranzberg proposed six Laws of Technology, the first of which read as follows: ‘Technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral’ (Kranzberg 1986b cited in Kranzberg 1991). Kranzberg expands on this to explain that technologies have ‘social and human consequences that go far beyond the immediate purposes of the technical devices themselves’ and that the effects depend on context and usage.
Naughton (2008) in his article ‘Thanks, Gutenberg – but we’re too pressed for time to read’ re-iterates Kranzberg’s (1991 p237) example of the influence of Gutenberg’s printing press on education and goes on to relate this to wider long-term change on reading due to increased access to information such as societal and cultural changes.
Naughton’s concise argument based on Kranzberg’s work, clearly lays out how printing has impacted on society, for example, the long-term consequences of reading on society in terms of education: the challenge to the Church, and length of schooling.
Naughton then considers the potential impact of the Berners-Lee’s web in light of Kranzberg’s first law – and in particular relates this to a new style of reading and conceptualisation of information based on a study from the British Library – which is referenced through a URL-shortening website (the link no longer functions). Williams & Rowland study (2007) from the British Library on the same topic at the same period of writing describes how the Google Generation struggle to:
- evaluate information (p11)
- pay sufficient attention to ‘authority of source’ (p11)
Both Naughton and the Williams & Rowland study refer to a ‘distinctive form of information behaviour’ amongst students related to:
- short sessions viewing relatively few pages
- simple thematic searches as opposed to author searches
And a tendency amongst both students and faculty to ‘shallow, horizontal, flicking behaviour in digital libraries’ with ‘power browsing and viewing … the norm for all’ and reading ‘only occasionally undertaken online.’
Naughton raises an interesting point in examining the effect of the web on reading, however his overall argument that people are reading less is not totally convincing. Prensky (2001) in his consideration of the ‘digital native’ appears to concur with Naughton’s view, describing how students have ‘changed radically’ and stating that ‘today‟s average college grads have spent less than 5,000 hours of their lives reading, but over 10,000 hours playing video games (not to mention 20,000 hours watching TV)’. However, he offers no evidence to support this statement.
Some of the research contradicts the idea that people are reading less, for example, the Williams & Rowland study (2007 p13) cites Rogers (2007) in reference to an increase of five minutes per day in reading in 2000 compared to the 1970s and Synovate (2007) which found that 49% of young people read books regularly and 41% magazines. A further study from the British Library concludes that although e-journals are used extensively by students, the ‘experience of reading
in hard copy is preferred by many’ (BL & JISC 2010 p4); the same study also concludes that both generation Y and older students rely on text-based and published resources (p9).
In addition, is the use of ‘power browsing’ significantly different to the skills of skimming used when reviewing print-based materials? Williams & Rowland (2007) also caution that ‘there is no reason to suppose that young people read more when they were required in the past to flick through hardcopy journal volumes.’
References
BL and JISC (2010) Researchers of Tomorrow: Annual Report 2009-2010, British Library / JISC Study, [online] Available from: http://explorationforchange.net/attachments/056_RoT%20Year%201%20report%20final%20100622.pdf (Accessed 30 January 2011).
Kranzberg, M. (1991) ‘Science-Technology-Society: it’s as easy as XYZ!’, Theory into Practice, 30(4), pp. 234-242, [online] Available from: http://libezproxy.open.ac.uk/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=5199651&site=eds-live&scope=site (Accessed 30 January 2011).
Naughton, J. (2008) ‘Thanks, Gutenberg – but we’re too pressed for time to read’, The Observer, London, England, 27th January, [online] Available from: http://docs.newsbank.com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:sid/iw.newsbank.com:UKNB:OBSC&rft_val_format=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&rft_dat=11E7B3EDD7DE4678&svc_dat=InfoWeb:aggdocs&req_dat=D77DAA714D5D439CB66B27643275D140 (Accessed 29 January 2011).
Prensky, Marc (2001) ‘Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants’, On the Horizon, 9(5), [online] Available from: http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf (Accessed 30 January 2011).
Williams, P. and Rowlands, I. (2007) THE LITERATURE ON YOUNG PEOPLE AND THEIR INFORMATION BEHAVIOUR, INFORMATION BEHAVIOUR OF THE RESEARCHER OF THE FUTURE, British Library / JISC Study, [online] Available from: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/reppres/ggworkpackageii.pdf (Accessed 30 January 2011).