The Internet is like a giant web of information all interconnected through links called hyperlinks. Established reading patterns emphasise the importance of close reading consisting of textual analysis, comprehension, and critical reflection often involving re-reading the text. Online reading experiences do not map exactly onto existing literacy patterns. Reading on the Internet places emphasis on searching, scanning, jumping, and filtering information. Internet reading is often a fast, multi-attention, communal act as seen by web blogs, twitters, and online wikis. Search-engines read Web pages by filtering hits according to popularity or relevance to an online community. Information Communication Technology (ICT) has merged into Information Society Technology (IST). Social networking sites are called Web 2.0. New patterns of online reading complement the emerging technologies that increasingly allow computers to read and write autonomously to each other across platforms and applications such as in XML (Extensible Markup Language) based technologies that underlie the new online text databases, archives, and RSS (Really Simple Syndication, also known as “web syndication”) feeds.
Watch Mike Wesch's YouTube video about Web 2.0 How is the Web affecting ways we gather information and use it?
