Text: “How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine”

In this text, Kathryn Hales goes over the three main methods of reading which are: close, hyper, and machine. Close reading is paying attention to the small and important details in the text in order to analyze it. Hyper reading is more of a digital-based method where the reader uses technology like the computer to read a text and therefore tend to fall upon the act of reading quickly through it by just scanning or skimming over it. Machine reading is using technology and literary skills in order to find certain patterns or to analyze the text using both traditional and modern methods. For example, like using word clouds and frequency based word counts to aid in coming up with a perspective on the text.

Kathryn however mentions how it is imporant to have a good balance of all of these methods in order to achieve improvements in reading and analysis of texts. In this case, I agree with her. Whilst sometimes I think one method may be better, I think it all depends on what it is you’re trying to achieve and what it is you’re trying to analyze. For example, using digital medium to parse through texts and show things like frequency of a specific word within the text might prove useful in the sense that the author of the text put that word in there so many times for a particular reason. Often at times though, if you are simply reading through the text, this might be something that could be easily overlooked. At the same time, skimming and scanning through a bunch of different texts allows readers to have access to a lot more content and information upon which they can use. One good example of this is when one is doing research. Often at times, this involves searching Google to try to find pages which contain relevant information. But in order to find what’s relevant usually the student will search and skim so many webpages. Then once a webpage is found which proves to significant to the research topic then they will read more in-depth on that specific information. So you see here a combination of hyper reading and close reading. Still though, I do not think I know which one is better. I am merely going by what I’ve found most efficient and what I see others do around me. However I wonder if people in the older days were able to think in a more substantial way because of the fact that they read a lot and had to analyze things themselves whereas today we have programs which help us analyze and look for patterns in texts or we have Google which ranks which pages are relevant. In the end though, I feel like the two periods of time cannot be compared. I think that although things have been made easier for us in a sense, it has also given us access to a whole new world of information and therefore has allowed us to really expand our minds to think in a different way.