Japanese for Beginners: Too Muchi
The Internet is rich in text and poor in quality. Three Japanese tricks to save time and nerves. Guest commentary by Oliver Reichenstein, information architect from Tokyo.
Over an after-work beer, my buddy Taro, a banker who has been spending his time surfing and drinking since being made redundant, suddenly shouts at me: "You with your Twitter, Friendfeed and RSS stuff! I signed up everywhere because of you. You're driving me up the wall with this read-this-read-that terror!"
To which I simply replied that nobody was forcing him to read everything.
"Yes, when I get a text from you, I have to read it. Otherwise I'll miss everything again, and then..." Taro exclaimed.
"Who says you have to read a text to the end? You save time if you study the first section of a text; and you also learn more. If you would 'not do this first studied section again', you can safely click away. Nietzsche said that the eternal recurrence...", I said.
That's when Brille interrupted me. Brille is an editor at a small Japanese design magazine, and we call him "Brille" because he wears the same dark green Ray Ban day and night: "If the first sentence bores me, then I read the last one; if the last one scores better than the beginning, then I read the article from bottom to top. I used to think that was somehow forbidden. But there is no god who checks whether you read a text backwards, from the middle or whatever. We're happy for every letter that gets read anyway."
Taro the banker waved him off: "I've known that trick for a long time. What I don't know is how to filter online information. Twitter, Friendfeed, RSS, Flickr, Mixi, it's all just too much for me."
Glasses nodded: "I know. But at least. With all the information junk the web throws at us, you get to choose. If at a certain point you start to get annoyed with the author, or even worse: bored, don't bother with the text. As long as the text entertains, it's good, isn't it?" said Brille, toasting me.
All I could think of was: "Online texts don't just want to be read, understood and liked, but above all linked to. Links increase the attention they receive and thus their core value. In order to be found, read, liked and linked to, the texts actually need a high entertainment value. This is a clear disadvantage compared to texts with an obligation to buy, which neither have to be found nor read, let alone entertain. The entertainment dogma is often good for the text, but just as often leads to shallow depths. When the author rages and rages like a toddler, he is usually just vying for attention. In short: texts worth reading are cheerful and make you cheerful. Nietsche thinks that the eternal...", I said, whereupon Brille, the print editor, interrupted me again. He tore my assertion that print texts don't want to be read to shreds.
At least he admitted this much: "You're certainly right about one thing. One of my grandmother's rules of life, famous throughout Kansai for her outbursts of anger, was: 'Never go to sleep in a rage, otherwise you'll have bad dreams'. I've made this rule of life my writing rule and, if I have to, I write about the banking crisis with a smile."
To which Taro said: "Nonsense! You don't write about banking crises! But tell me, why do you always wear those silly sunglasses?"
To which I simply replied that nobody was forcing him to read everything.
"Yes, when I get a text from you, I have to read it. Otherwise I'll miss everything again, and then..." Taro exclaimed.
"Who says you have to read a text to the end? You save time if you study the first section of a text; and you also learn more. If you would 'not do this first studied section again', you can safely click away. Nietzsche said that the eternal recurrence...", I said.
That's when Brille interrupted me. Brille is an editor at a small Japanese design magazine, and we call him "Brille" because he wears the same dark green Ray Ban day and night: "If the first sentence bores me, then I read the last one; if the last one scores better than the beginning, then I read the article from bottom to top. I used to think that was somehow forbidden. But there is no god who checks whether you read a text backwards, from the middle or whatever. We're happy for every letter that gets read anyway."
Taro the banker waved him off: "I've known that trick for a long time. What I don't know is how to filter online information. Twitter, Friendfeed, RSS, Flickr, Mixi, it's all just too much for me."
Glasses nodded: "I know. But at least. With all the information junk the web throws at us, you get to choose. If at a certain point you start to get annoyed with the author, or even worse: bored, don't bother with the text. As long as the text entertains, it's good, isn't it?" said Brille, toasting me.
All I could think of was: "Online texts don't just want to be read, understood and liked, but above all linked to. Links increase the attention they receive and thus their core value. In order to be found, read, liked and linked to, the texts actually need a high entertainment value. This is a clear disadvantage compared to texts with an obligation to buy, which neither have to be found nor read, let alone entertain. The entertainment dogma is often good for the text, but just as often leads to shallow depths. When the author rages and rages like a toddler, he is usually just vying for attention. In short: texts worth reading are cheerful and make you cheerful. Nietsche thinks that the eternal...", I said, whereupon Brille, the print editor, interrupted me again. He tore my assertion that print texts don't want to be read to shreds.
At least he admitted this much: "You're certainly right about one thing. One of my grandmother's rules of life, famous throughout Kansai for her outbursts of anger, was: 'Never go to sleep in a rage, otherwise you'll have bad dreams'. I've made this rule of life my writing rule and, if I have to, I write about the banking crisis with a smile."
To which Taro said: "Nonsense! You don't write about banking crises! But tell me, why do you always wear those silly sunglasses?"
