Pause & Effect pages 212-222. Think about the third paragraph on page 212 as you work in your blog this week: "Action is the highest form of thought." What does this mean? It might mean something from a writer's perspective, from a user's perspective, and from a student's perspective.
When I think of ‘Action is the highest form of thought’, I think that it is because actions stimulate your brain more than stationary or passive things. To take an action, you usually have a trigger such as an instruction, instinct, etc. In terms of a website, I think actions would be more appealing to the user. It would draw the user into the site and make them engaged. Engagement makes you more inclined to browse more and return to the site.
I agree with Meadows comment that we don’t fully understand something until we’ve done it (212). It is about experience. I think of think of those new Hulu commercials with Alec Baldwin. He repeatedly says ‘You never know until you try it” and “You won’t realize what you’re missing until view TV on your computer”. I think that is a very clever use of interactive narrative. It creates a sense of intrigue. And that intrigue is likely to lead to an action – the action of going to hulu.com.
A writer would use action to draw the reader in. If the reader remained passive, it would not be as engaging of an experience for the reader. If the reader isn’t excited or engaged, they are more likely to put the book down, exit the website, turn off the TV, etc. The writer needs to use action to gain the loyalty of the reader.
The user needs action to fully process the concept and purpose of the site or book. The action stimulates the user. I have struggled with creating action for the user in my site. I tend to get stuck on the only action as being clicking on links and opening pages. I feel there is more to do to make a website more engaging for the user, but it is hard for me to apply to a professional portfolio site. I can think of good mechanisms for a more informal site, but not professional. I think that in order for my site or any site to be successful, the user has to be engaged and want to explore and return to the site. It’s a lot harder to apply than I originally thought.
From a student, I refer again to Meadows’ comment on page 212 about comprehension relating to action. I can think of a perfect example of Meadows’ principle applied to this class. I can’t fully understand podcast creation until I create a podcast. I have never made one before, and while I thought it wouldn’t be too difficult, I am discovering all these things I didn’t know or think of. It is a complex process, and there is so much that goes into creating podcast that I didn’t dwell on before. So the action of creating a podcast is instrumental in my learning to create one. I could learn some of the same things reading a book about podcast, but I would miss some of the more complex details and nuances that I find as I take the action of creating a podcast. The action is a great teacher.
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I translated Meadow's statement to mean that action is the result of the synthesization of knowledge. I imagined that the user visits a web page and if a connection was made (if something was learned, gained or curiousity was peaked) the user would do something (move forward to the next page, click a rollover, return to the site at a later date). When the site does not demand further consideration b/c it is static or boring, the user gains nothing and takes no action.
ReplyDeleteI think Meadow's is saying that thought-synthesis-action-thought... are part of a perpetual cycle. When a web creator has achieved that cycle, he has built a good and useful site.
Your post is interesting, but I wonder if we should conceive of action not as an either-or proposition but as Meadows suggests in Pause and Effect as degrees of action. When you note that the writer must include action to continually engage the reader or that the user "needs" action to fully process the book or the website, I question whether this is always and absolutely true. There are no shortage of textbooks and theoretical tomes that we read as part of our studies that have no inherent action in the text itself and yet we engage with many of them because they speak to our deepest interests and those things which we are most inquisitive about. And then I also wonder - isn't reading in and of itself an action - and are we ever truly passive? Even vegging in front of the tv requires the action of choosing to turn the tube on and sit there for an indeterminate time.
ReplyDeleteOnce again I identify with your website struggles - I'm still trying to think of good ways to actually engage the reader and create action. Sigh...
ReplyDeleteI agree with Meadows' views, but Monica brings up some good points on her blog as well - can action and thought exist independently? I would argue that they can, if only for the reason that in some cases action cannot necessarily follow thought, at least not successful action - some physics theories remain theories because we do not have the ability to test them. In this sort of case, what sort of action can follow thought? We can debate the theory until the end of time, and that is an action, but we can't prove or disprove, say, that throwing something into a black hole will make that same object exit a white hole somewhere else in the universe... Just a thought. Perhaps I've had too much sugar today. :-)
Ashley,
ReplyDeleteI love your comment "The action is the great teacher".
Once again, I am reminded of the different learning styles: auditory, visual, and tactile, and that we are generally a mixture of the three styles, subject to change with aging!
My learning style has changed as I age. Where as once I could learn more by listening, that talent seems to be declining. I must see and touch to learn. I can learn a concept through watching. Making the application is a horse of a different color. I can watch someone write code for hours and finally understand what they are doing. But when I sit down to write it, I can't just pull up my memories of what I saw nearly as easily as I can if my memories include not only what I saw, but the memory of actually wrote the code, too. Somehow, the memory sticks better when muscles are involved!
I wonder if muscles have memory, too?
About the idea of not fully understanding something until you do it, I think that has been so true for me in virtually all circumstances. Doing is the great teacher. Everything seems easy until you try to do it, which is why home improvement projects always take at least three times as long as you imagine they will. Whether it's car repairs or computer construction or whatever, I believe that anything can be broken into small enough parts to be teachable and learnable. A key principle for me has been to break some difficult task down even more, if I feel like I've hit a roadblock (and there always are many). It's like mountain climbing, too. I've been at the base of a mountain, and looked up, and thought to myself, how in the world am I ever going to get up there? And, sure enough, by taking one step at a time, I eventually get there. That's where I think the doing comes into play. Every step, every action, completely changes the playing field. It's so much more complex to look at a situation from being within each step and looking around, rather than just looking at a list of steps. If we value the process, then, the action, rather than just the final product, we'll begin to understand more about the dynamics that take place at each segment of learning.
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