ASH-10 - Latest Comments in Surfing the web with blinkers on

Re: Surfing the web with blinkers on

danielcremin — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 11:50:44 -0000

Great stuff!
Im realy interested in this whole area of how people/organisations/communities organise their experience and perceptions, Some of the roots which form the cornerstones of the Gestalt psychology of perception and approach to social psychology address this whole area; best summarised in the work of Kurt Lewin and Spinelli links below
The Interpreted World: An Introduction to Phenomenological Psychology; Dr Ernesto Spinelli
http://psychology.about.com...
www.afn.org/~gestalt/fignd.htm
http://www.psychology.sbc.e...

Daniel

Re: Surfing the web with blinkers on

cleanskies — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:47:25 -0000

I can't remember the exact term, but the concept translates as context blindness -- whereby an anomalous element within a well understood context (e.g. an ostrich in a sauna) can be edited out by an observer, especially if their attention has been directed to a specific element in the image (e.g. count the number of benches in the sauna) -- even though it looks completely obvious once you know it's there (or, indeed, appropriate furniture for a particular context might be scribbled in) .

The relation to scanning articles might occur when you pick up your obvious context from an example (or even counter example), parenthesis, or off-topic line -- but even careful readers bring their own context to the piece, and a filtered reading is still a reading.

In your example above, I see someone's general irritation at yet another article full of internet hating being given sudden focus by one of those easily understood contexts (youtube). Taking issue with the supporting example is still attacking the argument.

Re: Surfing the web with blinkers on

Pete Ashton — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:12:30 -0000

Internet on mescaline is probably like following 10,000 people on Twitter and reading every single bloody tweet.

Re: Surfing the web with blinkers on

Katchooo — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 18:58:21 -0000

"...we are unable to process everything that our senses pick up on so we filter out the unnecessary stuff to stop us going mad."

Filtering massively but the reference to this is from Aldous Huxley's Doors of Perception. Taking mescaline I think it was allowed him to see everything simultaneously and so he came to the conclusion that the brain was a filter that allowed us sanity. Wonder what the internet is like on mescaline.

Re: Surfing the web with blinkers on

Hg — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:01:11 -0000

"So let’s look at my sketch again, this time using the whiteboard as the medium of choice.

I can't believe that you think the whiteboard is the medium of choice. Whiteboards are rubbish.

(Sorry, but obviously SOMEONE had to do this.)