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Usually. This is not one of those times.
(Someone explain the cartoon/artwork that goes with the article to me.)
[theatlantic.com...]
Perhaps it's partly because I've been working on computers since the age of 4, but I find it much more natural to express myself through typing than handwriting. The idea that you can be more expressive when writing by hand simply doesn't hold true for me. Since my typing speed is two to three times as fast as my handwriting speed, I'm more encouraged to write MORE detail, rather than less. And, as an added side benefit, I can actually read what I've written as well. :)
I also don't believe Google is behind the loss of concentration many people see--in my case, my ability to concentrate is actually increased. I've learned to ignore droves of ads, flashing banners, and unimportant search results to go straight where I want to go, read it thoroughly, and then apply it. I would call this concentrating to an extreme, rather than an inability to concentrate. As an example, I read their entire article through thoroughly without even noticing the rather large linkbar positioned to the right of the content--I would consider that to be "deep reading".
Where does it end? Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the gifted young men who founded Google while pursuing doctoral degrees in computer science at Stanford, speak frequently of their desire to turn their search engine into an artificial intelligence, a HAL-like machine that might be connected directly to our brains.
I must have missed that definition of artificial intelligence in my comp sci courses. :)
Or would, if I didn't waste it all playing computer games. :)
What a lame article. I had to quit reading it. I'm much more informed about topics since information is so readily available. I type so much faster than I write. I completely understand what Wesley was saying about being a much more focused reader. I've got music going, a nice view outside my windows, employees chatting to me, emails flying in, but I can still completely focus on an article and completely absorb it.
Internet making us dumb. Huh. Guess it depends on how good you are at filtering out the junk / misinformation.
"I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print,"
I vote heck yes, particularly our kids. They come home from school with a stack of books they're supposed to read, immediately plant themselves at the computer, and hit Wikipedia and Yahoo Answers to do their homework. Never even crack the books except to read the assignments at the end of the chapters and fill in the blanks. Copy/paste, get an A. I mean, why really absorb the idea when I can just Google it? It's becoming more and more rare to find kids actually willing to learn.
The Internet is like alcohol, it just lets the true colors come out. I mean, just look at some of my rantings . . . . . :-)
The web has made it much easier for me to express myself clearly. And, OK, (as rocknbil notes above) and the web has made it much easier for me to express myself not so clearly, too.
My hope is that we, taken together, use the web to counter the injustice of nonsense that gets taken as fact.
Is that happening? Well, there is a lot of nonsense out in the world, so this is going to take some time. But, if I am right, then the answer to the article's headline is no, just the opposite.
