Nicholas Carr, in his article for the Atlantic Monthly, argues that the amount of time that we all spend reading on the web has turned many of us into chronic skimmers. Even those of us who were literature majors in college find it difficult to stick with a narrative for long periods of time. Web content, with all it’s linky sidetrips, makes it difficult to finish a lengthy article, and all this hopping around impacts not only how we interact with media, but also how we think. Carr quotes a pathologist who refers to the “staccato” nature of his thoughts, and I, for one, can relate to that feeling. It’s a good thing I am not a surgeon because I would get sidetracked watering my plants on the way to an emergency appendectomy. Honestly, I’m amazed that I made it through this blog post. It’s going to be short, because I need to get back to the four other things I was doing before I ran across this article and decided to blog about it.
Here it is. If you passed unscathed through my gauntlet of links and made it to this point, I dare you to read the whole thing. I didn’t. It’s kind of long.
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
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HT: Rob Sica, who commented here
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