Is Google Making Us Stupid?
A recommended read to make you think about the way that you read and think
Nicholas Carr asks, "What is the internet doing to our brains?" in a very insightful aticle in the Atlantic. He notices that same thing that I notice, "Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the 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 often 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."
He ties this into the type of reading that we are encouraged to do as we surf the web, quickly skimming for the content and moving on. It isn't necessarily a worse way to read, just a different way; it is strengthening different muscles than are strengthened when you sit down and thoughtfully digest and interact with long chunks of reading. But those muscles need to be strengthened as well; I think that's why we have such a difficult time reading older writers, especially the Puritans, who would take a long time to make their point, but put more thought, support, and explanation into it than any modern editor would ever allow.
Anyway, the article looked really interesting, but how would I know, I got bored and surfed away after a few minutes....then I decided that my brain needed a workout, and I pushed through and finished it, skimming only once or twice. A recommended read to make you think about the way that you read and think.
