Is Google making us stupid?

Do readers go online to avoid reading?

In the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly, author and essayist Nicholas Carr paints a disturbing picture of the way Internet use affects his cognition: “[W]hat the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

And Carr is not alone. Carr’s literary friends sound the same alarm: “What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?” While these are familiar complaints, Carr cites recent scientific studies into this phenomenon, and these studies suggest “that we may be in the midst of a sea change in the way we read and think” thanks to the way we use the Internet.

The authors of one study report:

It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.

This is an interesting trend to ponder, especially as we develop materials for print and online learning. What kind of graduates does BCIT want to produce: those who can think, read, reason deeply — or those who are merely skimmers and decoders of information?

One last quote:

[T]the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online . . . we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.

Read the full article.