11-2-03
What I know about a book includes physical and visual cues. Where on the page an idea appears. A feel for approximately how many pages there are in one hand and in the other hand if I am holding the book open with both. Things I remember later so I can find my way back to an idea with a minimum of effort. And then there are my own marks, stars and boxes, hatches and underlines of varying weights for subtle cues, all of which I have perfected over time. To read without these, even if the reading is enriched by links and commentary, is reading handicapped. These are not the aesthetic luxuries some writers go on about in New Yorker essays, not the usual “writing just isn’t the same without the $100 fountain pen!” wimpery — these are genuine holes in a system of organizing knowledge. Computer text-provision systems need to take into account that people accustomed to reading books have methods like these, and should provide similar resources.
I don’t know if the next generation of computer users will have the same needs — maybe they will have other ways of managing knowledge. And surely everyone’s methods are different, so systems should be flexible.
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1/25/04
New strategy this semester: in reading materials on the computer, I am using Word’s text highlighting and “comment” abilities. Of course I hate relying on the Evil Empire, but these functions have a relatively simple interface, and I have high hopes that the highlighting will help cue me to remember which parts of an e-text are important better than leaving a blank text behind. I like that the comments pop up when you mouse over; it’s almost as good as having margins. However, there are still questions about whether underlining and highlighting help me at all! I have found that margin comments help — I have near-photographic memory, over the course of a few days at least, of where on a bicameral page I have left a star or note. And of course, this is something that is not too doable on a scrolling page of text; so much for that tool…
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