14 karma · joined June 2, 2009
[1] http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...
He says there are two different ways of reading(ventral route and dorsal stream) and that the latter way is preferable because it is more conscious of the actual text being read. When reading on digital devices he worries that we will only be reading through the ventral route, because the clear display quality will make it so easy for us the read the letters and words.
Now, there is a few things I'm wondering about: In practice, do we actually ever read through the dorsal stream? In the research experiments quoted, this was archived through rotating letters or errant punctuation, both of which we do not usually encounter in actual books.
The author also mentions the dorsal stream being activated because of an obscure word, or an awkard subclause. This seems more like the thing that would in practice cause us to use the dorsal stream. Is the dorsal stream active in cases of difficult texts, e.g. scientific papers?
If that is so, then it seems to me that it is not so much a question of wether you read on a digital device with great display quality or a simple book, but instead it seems to be of much greater importance what it is that you are reading. A Dan Brown book, would probably only activate the ventral route on both mediums, whereas the newest P[!|=]=NP proof would probably always activate the dorsal stream. Is my understanding of the ventral route and dorsal stream correct?
Also, I think that personalized adds and recommendations(Amazon,Google,Facebook,etc.) have a much higher success rate, simply because they have more information about you and can therefore recommend products that you are more likely to buy. Spammers could of course also collect information about you to personalize their Spam, but considering that most add/recommendation systems work automatically(and are pretty good), I don't think paying someone to create these recommendations would be worth the effort.