<!DOCTYPE html> <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Tasks of the Contingent Librarian</title> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="tasks.css"> <script src="tasks.js"></script> </head> <body> <div class="card"><DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT><div class="mw-parser-output"><h1><span class="mw-headline" id="human_reading">human reading</span><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/mw-mediadesign/index.php?title=User:Simon/Human_reading&action=edit&section=1" title="Edit section: human reading">edit</a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></h1> <p>see also <a href="Technologising_the_word.html" title="User:Simon/Technologising the word">technologising the word</a> </p><p>There are many different reasons why you might read something, but essentially, reading involves skimming (reading to get the main idea of a text) or scanning (looking for specific information in details). This often happens in tandem—skimming the catalogue to see what the interest of the library is, and then scanning to see if a particular text has been included—and has relations to other modes of information retrieval, e.g. browsing/searching. </p><p>In 1977, while facing a skeptical audience in a Q & A session broadcast live on Australian television, Marshall McLuhan argued “the word read means to guess – look it up in the big dictionary. Reading is an activity of rapid guessing because any word has so many meanings – including the word reading – that to select one in a context of other words requires very rapid guessing. That’s why a good reader tends to be a very quick decision-maker.”<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-1"><a href="#cite_note-1">[1]</a></sup> This is very true of human reading, where multiple interpretations lead to various equivalent understandings of a text, but false when applied to machine reading, which only operates with predefined ways of interpreting text. </p><p>Image: "the word read means to guess" A quote from Marshall McLuhan during a live television broadcast, 1977 </p> <div class="mw-references-wrap"><ol class="references"> <li id="cite_note-1"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><a href="#cite_ref-1">↑</a></span> <span class="reference-text">McLuhan, M., Available at <a class="external free" href="https://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/acute-abstruse-things-marshall-mcluhan-said-in-australia-in-1977/" rel="nofollow">https://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/acute-abstruse-things-marshall-mcluhan-said-in-australia-in-1977/</a></span> </li> </ol></div> <!-- NewPP limit report Cached time: 20200620082439 Cache expiry: 86400 Dynamic content: false CPU time usage: 0.012 seconds Real time usage: 0.021 seconds Preprocessor visited node count: 14/1000000 Preprocessor generated node count: 58/1000000 Post‐expand include size: 0/2097152 bytes Template argument size: 0/2097152 bytes Highest expansion depth: 2/40 Expensive parser function count: 0/100 Unstrip recursion depth: 0/20 Unstrip post‐expand size: 584/5000000 bytes --> <!-- Transclusion expansion time report (%,ms,calls,template) 100.00% 0.000 1 -total --> <!-- Saved in parser cache with key wdka_mw_mediadesign-mw_:pcache:idhash:31468-0!canonical and timestamp 20200620082438 and revision id 174090 --> </div></DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT></div> </body> </html>