Blog Four: The Amnesia Blog, Beginning to Think

My apologies for the lateness. I completely forgot to post this last week.

For a lack of better phrasing, at least currently, I have always been interested in the way that “market” forces influence the ways that we read and write. Blandly coming down on one side of the nature/nurture debate, I believe that human nature is fairly stable and that societal influences are what serve as our most tangible way of adjusting expressions of those traits. In this way, I see research as a form of faith in social adjusters. When somebody examines whether or not images influence our reading of a text, there are implicitly asking the question “should society adjust the way that we present texts and images?”

To reattempt diving into this topic, I will switch my jargon up here, and say that I am interested in the meta-discourse surrounding the way that our attempts to manipulate our social systems actually end up playing out. As far back as the Elementary School years of my childhood, educational indoctrination pushed forward the idea that the metalinguistic discourse was ultimately beholden to populist ideals and market forces (Clements, 1996). Therefore, it seems only appropriate to examine what effect the effort of self-examination and reflection actually has on engagement with systems.

Based on my initial research and examinations, my suspicions are that our efforts at meta-adjustments are often thwarted by the simple reality that people are not wholly blind to these meta-manipulations, and will inevitably adjust their behavior around these manipulations, rather than in accordance with them. As with any meta-meta-discussion, there is a risk of recursion when delving into ideas such as these, but I still feel this is fertile ground for some compelling information to be discovered.

“The Evolution of Google's Search Results Pages & Effects on User Behaviour” (2014), Meditative Marketing, http://pages.mediative.com/SERP-Research

“F-Shaped Pattern for Reading Web Content” (2006) Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Ratings, http://www.nngroup.com/articles/f-shaped-pattern-reading-web-content/

“Frindle” (1996), Andrew Clements, Aladdin Paperbacks, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frindle

Metacognitive regulation of text learning: On screen versus on paper.

Ackerman, Rakefet; Goldsmith, Morris

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, Vol 17(1), Mar 2011, 18-32.