In this article from the current issue of The Atlantic, the author wonders if Google is making us stupid BECAUSE web reading leads to quick reading, skimming, jumping from link to link, making our minds less able to read long stretches of print---i.e. less able to read books.
This phenomenon is not just psychological: it is equally neurological as our brain circuits are rerouted.
"My mind isn't going---so far as I can tell---but it's changing. I'm not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I'm reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in tghe narrative or the turns of the argument, and I'd spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration oftens starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I'm always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle."
It's the Web that is causing this. Though the Web is a marvelous thing, here we have a huge negative side-effect.
The shape of the neural networks inside our brains are changing, and not for the better.
More later from this article on this subject.
2 comments:
I read this article too. It was sent to me via SLIS-L. I'm still don't know what my feelings are/should be about technology and reading, but I think you and this author are on to something.
I agree technology affects how you read. It is disturbing.
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