Dwight McDonald presents his view and thoughts with respect to reading a written material. He argues that the nature of printer matter that inundates us is the presence of functional curiosity that impels people to read a piece of information very fast with respect to time available. This functional curiosity is usually evident with educated people. In most cases, people have the curiosity but the functionality part of it does not reflect at all. Therefore, the main aim of reading a printed material as per today is to enhance one’s functional gain at expense of money or political interest among many others.
According to him, people of today do not have enough time to read any given written material. He compares this with the people of the past who had all the time to red any given material. This is to mean that a person with a great interest to read a piece of a written material and without enough time will automatically go through the reading very fast to get rough idea of what the written material is talking about. He also argues that the new generation of people is able to go through a piece of writing very fast as company to the people of the past. The reason behind this is that the new generation has more developed minds as compared to the past generation hence can go through a piece a written material very fast with limited amount of time. However, the old lot cannot manage to read the material very fast with limited time since their minds were costumed to function very slow and they would require the whole day to read a piece of material.
The position taken by Dwight McDonald about reading is very true as with limited time skimming remains the best method to apply. Reading in the recent world is taking another direction with a lot of limited time. The mode of reading is subject to the time available and the content being read. For instance, some of the contents require the reader to read deeply in order to internalize whatever the source is talking about. This is mostly common for school leaning whereby one will be exposed to a kind of test. In order to pass any test subject to reading one must have to read the source provided deeply. However, with limited time such type of written content brings a lot of challenge to the readers as far as the level of understanding is concerned. Although the minds may be conditioned to read very fast the end result may be affected. On the other hand, if the reading is for quenching ones interests such as newspapers and magazines, one requires reading over the papers very fast taking into consideration the time limitation (Steven all).
It is true that there is a great change between the people of the past and the people of today when it comes to reading habits. As Dwight puts it, the people of the past would read a piece of literature deeply irrespective of its length with a main aim of understanding what is covered in the source well. This means that such people cannot afford to read a written material with limitation of time as per today. However, with recent development of the world environment, the new generation has great developments in their minds as compared to the people of the past. Thus they are able to pass through a piece of information faster compared to the people of the past. The aim today is to use the limited amount of time to read and have an idea of what the source is talking about.
As a result, of the changes in the environment requiring people use the time available to read a provided material, the writers of today’s work have put into consideration the issue of limited reading time. Following this many writers of today focus on coming up with written material that catches the attention of the reader very fast. In addition, they have simplified their materials to make the readers who do not have enough reading time go through the material very fast and at the same time understand the gist of that material.
Comparing the two generations with respect to the speed and the degree of understandability of the content covered to be read, it is true that the past generation was thorough in reading. Although they could take much time that was available to read deeply and internalize a given content, they would understand very well. However, the new generation is subject to various problems when it comes to reading most predominant being time constraint. For instance, with increased use of length pieces of writing more particularly in the internet, the young people show a losing ability to read properly. The fact that the young pass through a piece of writing very fast does not mean that they understand what they are reading. As a result, young people will go through a piece of information very fast to get an idea of what the content contents as they compete with the time available.
In conclusion, the reading habits displayed by various groups of people are greatly affected by the time available. People have focused on going through a written or printed material quickly to cope with the time available. To make the issue simple, the writers of today have tried to make the work simple to enable faster reading.
Work Cited
Steven, Poole. The internet isn't harming our love of 'deep reading', it's cultivating it. The guardian. n.p. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/11/internet-deep- reading. 11 April 2014.
