All Aboard the Loss-of-Meaning Train

             I read the Stanley Fish essay referred to in James Sosnoski's "Hyper-Readers and their Reading Engines," and I'm still trying to figure out how it was meant to support Sosnoski's claim about filtering. Sosnoski states, “As inheritors of the work of Fish and other reading theorists, most teachers now readily admit that reading is a highly selective process, one in which the majority of details are forgotten, leaving the reader to be content with plot summaries, thumbnail characterizations, representative scenes, and themes, most of them memorable because they can be assimilated into what Frank Smith taught us to call “cognitive structures”” (Sosnoski 165). The most memorable aspects mentioned here falling into cognitive structures resonates with what Fish says (“students did not proceed from the noting of distinguishing features to the recognition that they were confronted by a poem; rather, it was the act of recognition that came first--they knew in advance that they were dealing with a poem-- and the distinguishing features then followed.”), but Sosnoski gives those words to Smith. The more I think about this, the more convoluted it all becomes and the more I demand a hypertext for sorting this mess out. This essay on hypertext would in fact make for a decent hypertext setting, but then Sosnoski would lose parts of his message, become de-authorizied. And yet I can’t help but think he’s already being de-authorized by citing Fish and Smith. Eva-Maria Jakobs might agree with this notion as she draws parallels between footnotes/references and hypertext (Jakobs 357). I’m straying from the point which is that Fish has more to say about cognitive structures than he does about filtering, and if Sosnoski would go ahead and hypertextualize this essay already, I could follow Frank Smith’s link and better see what the hell is being proposed.

My issue with filtering as it is presented here is that if inherent in reading is this notion that what is read necessarily disintegrates into oblivion, what will happen when even less is read? It seems skimming, pecking, fragmenting all pertain to less being read about a particular subject. I suppose it’s not that the cumulative content being read is lessened, but rather that each piece receives less focus. It allows for extension rather than depth which makes for a vaster overview of a topic. At the same time, though, each piece will undergo this “highly selective process” which will cause most to be forgotten. Don’t the elements matter? Doesn’t it allow for a greater understanding of the whole when one intimately knows the pieces that constitute it?

I’m noticeably expressing my anxiety over hypertext, and it’s a serious anxiety. I’d like to incorporate a link to the chaos that ensues inside my head at the moment, but it seems technology’s reach is not yet capable of the feat. And at the same time, everything I write is a link, a sort of hypertext that allows readers into the recesses of my chaotic mind. I can’t help but wonder if the reading this week was meant to be a manifestation of the idea that “information devours its content (Sosnoski 164), because I’m feeling an information overload in which the content is devoured, and I’m left writing a post bereft of any meaning.

Maybe the loss-of-meaning train will inevitably be boarded (more and more information, and less and less meaning (Sosnoski 164)). Maybe I’m boarding right now.