{"title":"Reading in the Age of Compression","authors":"L. Koepnick","doi":"10.1215/03335372-8883206","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n Compression is often considered a royal road to process data in ever-shorter time and to cater to our desire to outspeed the accelerating transmission of information in the digital age. This article explores how different techniques of accelerated text dissemination and reading, such as consonant writing, speed-reading apps, and the PDF file format, borrow from the language of compression yet, precisely in so doing, obscure the constitutive multilayered temporality of reading and the embodied role of the reader. While discussing different methods aspiring to compress textual objects and processes of reading, the author illuminates hidden assumptions that accompany the rhetoric of text compression and compressed reading.","PeriodicalId":46669,"journal":{"name":"POETICS TODAY","volume":"42 1","pages":"193-206"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8000,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"POETICS TODAY","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-8883206","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Compression is often considered a royal road to process data in ever-shorter time and to cater to our desire to outspeed the accelerating transmission of information in the digital age. This article explores how different techniques of accelerated text dissemination and reading, such as consonant writing, speed-reading apps, and the PDF file format, borrow from the language of compression yet, precisely in so doing, obscure the constitutive multilayered temporality of reading and the embodied role of the reader. While discussing different methods aspiring to compress textual objects and processes of reading, the author illuminates hidden assumptions that accompany the rhetoric of text compression and compressed reading.
期刊介绍:
International Journal for Theory and Analysis of Literature and Communication Poetics Today brings together scholars from throughout the world who are concerned with developing systematic approaches to the study of literature (e.g., semiotics and narratology) and with applying such approaches to the interpretation of literary works. Poetics Today presents a remarkable diversity of methodologies and examines a wide range of literary and critical topics. Several thematic review sections or special issues are published in each volume, and each issue contains a book review section, with article-length review essays.