Alexandra Alter, a books and book publishing reporter for the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), in her article, "Your E-book Is Reading You" discusses the ability for publishers to collect customer reading habits information (analytics) through the use of e-book readers and related software. Prior to working at the WSJ, Alter earned a college degree and master's degrees in journalism and religion from Columbia University. The WSJ is a prestigious newspaper in the United States with over 2 million readers. The WSJ is one of the most widely read newspapers. The target audience for this article consists of general book readers and consumers using e-book readers. The article is a timely as in 2012; the Pew Research Center released a report demonstrating …show more content…
Analytics is the core message that Alter is trying to discuss with the reader. The big players in digital publishing and retailing (Google, Amazon, and Apple) are now able to collect many data points through their applications and devices. Through the acting of reading, consumers are generating data, which stored in a database. In turn, publishers process and transforms this data into behavior analytics. In the past, publishers had no way of knowing what a reader's behavior was like. Before the invention of digital books and e-book readers, reading was a solidary activity. Publishers had access to sales data and little else. With the development of e-reading devices such as the Kindle, publishers are now able to analyze reader's behaviors and develop some analytics. Businessdictionary.com defines analytics as "The field of data analysis. Analytics often involves studying past historical data to research potential trends, to analyze the effects of certain decisions or events, or to evaluate the performance of a given tool or scenario. The goal of analytics is to improve the business by gaining knowledge which can be used to make improvements or changes." Alter's claim is digital publishers have greater access to …show more content…
According to the WSJ media kit, the average household income for a WSJ reader is over $200,000 USD. The author understands that she is writing for an educated audience. Alter uses hypophora in the second paragraph of the article in reference to the publisher's lack of understanding of reader behaviors. "Does the reader quit after three pages, or finish it in a single sitting? Do most readers skip over the introduction, or read it closely, underlining passages and scrawling notes in the margins?" Alter uses anaphora in the sixth paragraph: "how far readers get in particular books, how quickly they read and how readers of particular genres engage with books." to emphasize the data collected by publisher Barnes & Noble through their e-book reader, the Nook. In paragraph 8, Alter makes use of parenthesis "But the data—which focuses on groups of readers, not individuals—has already yielded some useful insights into how people read particular genres." to explain the type of data that collected by the Nook. Barnes & Noble have enough data to aggregate behaviors based on the behaviors of groups of readers. The author chooses parenthesis again with "Kindle users sign an agreement granting the company permission to store information from the device—including the last page you've read, plus your bookmarks, highlights, notes and annotations—in its data servers." In both cases, parenthesis exists to reinforce the
In the article “Science Says You Should Still Keep Reading Print Books Over e-Books “by Penn Collins, is successful on providing a great detail on how online reading is making people take shortcuts. However, he lacks a data’s to support his arguments.
Reading today is a lot different then it was in the year 868 AD; when the first book was published in China. You know a written or printed work consisting of pages glued or sewn together along one side and bound in covers. Society today is so advanced that everything we do is constantly changing whether we realize it or not. For example, the book, before people would go to a bookstore or library to get the books they were interested in. Today society is making fewer trips to the bookstore and library, and making purchases of novels on their e-readers in the comfort of their own home. With these e-readers you can simply purchase any book you would like, some books being under a buck or even free, saving you a trip to the bookstore. E-readers
Dana Gioia claims that the decline of reading in america will have a negative effect on society. Gioia uses studies and facts to appeal to her audiences logical and emotional sides. By adding these studies, Gioia strengthens her claim and makes her audience worry for the future society of America. Throughout the essay, Dana Gioia uses surveys, studies, and facts to draw her audience's attention to the issue at hand.
According to the United Nations Agency, approximately 3.2 billion people have used the Internet since 2015, which has made a drastic increase since 2000 with there only being 738 million internet users then. That is almost 43% of the world's population that uses the internet. A controversial topic that is commonly being brought up in today's arguments is the use of the internet and how people believe it is becoming such a detriment to our society, because nobody in this generation acknowledges the value of books, or even prefers to use an actual copy such as a paperback. The internet, such as Google, is being classified as lazy or ignorant, but reading a book is labeled as literate or being knowledgeable. Thesis:“Teaching in the #Age Literacy” by Jennifer L. Nelson and “Is Google Making Us stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, both analyze the pros and cons to having the internet and information at our fingertips, how it is affecting the way we read and analyze text and different scientific experiments that have been put to use to decode why we think the way we do now and how to improve our intelligence.
This article, Reading to Have Read, has caused me to "open my eyes" as to what is really happening when people read nowadays. The author made points of which I completely not only agreed with, but related to. Reading this, and not "spritzing" it, has made me understand how the brain has been altered to fit in with the convenience of the now.
Dana Gioia, author of the article "why Literature Matters", writes about the decline of reading in the U.S. and how it affects our society. The consequences of people not reading are expressed through his specific factual evidence and his prediction of what is going to happen if the American people continue to ignore this issue.
Carr opens with various statements making the reader understand his stand point, that the Web has changes the way his mind works, “uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. (Carr, 2008)” After rising this personal comments Carr, uses the experience of acquaintance to inform the reader more about this statement. Using Scott Karps, a blogger, statements to makes the viewer see the after effect of the web, Carr tells the reader, “. Scott Karp,[…] recently confessed that he has stopped reading books altogether. “I was a lit major in college, and used to be [a] voracious book reader[…] “What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed? (Carr, 2008)” Carr uses these comment to further address the
In response to the American declining reading trend, New York Times author Dana Gioia writes an editorial piece on the subject. In her piece she uses various national studies and surveys, the workplace and the civic duty to make her point of the negative effects of diminished reading habits.
Technological advances have shaped this era into what it is today. From news articles to Facebook posts, we are always reading throughout the day. In the article, “Nation Shudders at Large Block of Uninterrupted Text” by The Onion in the book Everyone’s an Author, raises questions how reading habits have changed over the past couple generations. One has to wonder what text we take the time to read and what text we do not take the time to read. Everyday advertisements, articles, and many other texts pry for our attention. In this day and age, people want information right away. This article shows how reading habits by Americans have shifted over the past few decades and generations.
Merga, Margaret K. "Are Teenagers Really Keen Digital Readers? Adolescent Engagement in Ebook Reading and the
Declines in reading is growing larger and larger as time goes on. The author showed this by using a survey that was taken in 2002. It stated “declines have been most severe among younger adults… ages 18-24”. If the younger adults arent intrested in reading, then they won’t push that love onto their children one day. This then starts a trend of literature rates droping fast.
As a writer who has been observing his own reading habit, Carr notices that the instant access to information makes him form a new reading habit that is skimming instead of deep-reading. That not only happens to him, but also to his friends who are bloggers who used to read and write very often. “Scott Karp, who writes a blog about online media, recently confessed that he has stopped reading books altogether. The way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?” (Carr par. 5). Another
Schwartz’s data shows that readers can’t stay focused. The more I type, the more of you tune out. And it’s not just me. It’s not just Slate. It’s everywhere online. When people land on a story, they very rarely make it all the way down the page.
Nowadays, there are thousands of books available free on the Internet, and people find them easy to read the book online instead of getting the hard copy of the book. In his book The Shallows, Nicholas Carr explains that the online readings make it becomes difficult for us to pay full attention to the reading “The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing”(7). For example, when I have to read the articles from the Internet for my research papers or class assignments, I always have hard time focus on the reading because I easily get distracted by the ads shown on the pages. I start paying attention to the ads instead of understanding and absorb the information. Carr also states that “For some people, the very idea of reading a book has come to seem old-fashioned, maybe even little silly- like sewing your own shirts or butchering your own meat”(8). In these days, people find it boring to read books, especially young adults, they think it is a waste of time to read books when they can get the short versions of reading from the Internet instead of reading a page to
New media has emerged from the print media. But its target audience is different from that of print media. Today, we have young readers getting attracted towards new media. This is because they feel that they really don’t need to waste their time reading when they