There’s been a lot of talk lately on the book blogs about what the Internet is doing to our ability to read, and not surprisingly, no one wants to speak for everyone and sound like a luddite and say the end is near. But people are talking about their own experiences, and I have to say it’s pretty scary.
A couple months ago, David Ulin, book editor for the LA Times, wrote, “Sometime late last year — I don’t remember when, exactly — I noticed I was having trouble sitting down to read.”
The Elegant Variation chimed in a few days ago, “I have become conscious of how severely my reading has degraded, how deformed my capacity for sustained focus has become.”
And at CAAF: “[While reading,] my brain was roving around just as much as my gaze was: mentally rummaging in the kitchen cupboards (chips?), wondering if I had any new email (probably not), and brooding on my petty jealousies and everyday activities (endless).”
I agree with all of them. After just a few hours of web time, I lose the ability to communicate verbally and read anything written before 1985. On that note, I’m off to go sit in the park now to try to finish a book. We’ll see.
3 responses
Stuff like this really makes me wonder about teaching kids to read from digital formats.
It’s not the format–it’s the multitasking that’s the problem. Recent studies have shown that no one actually multitasks–we just divide our attention into ever tinier chunks, with the net effect that we wind up dumber as a result. Internet usage can certainly add to that, but it alone isn’t the culprit–we’re doing it to ourselves.
Ask yourself–when you’re online, how many tabs do you have open at a time? I probably average between 6 and 8, depending on whether or not I’m working in Google docs at the time. Plus I’ve got Twitter running in the background, my Mac Mail chimes when I get something, and one of the tabs is usually Facebook, which updates regularly as well. If I spend just a couple of hours doing that, I can barely speak coherently, and I do it more often than I should, to be quite honest.
But if I’m reading, just reading, whether a book or on Stanza on my iPhone, my attention is undivided, no matter the format, and I’m fine. The format isn’t the issue–it’s the notion that we can multitask.
Hi Brian, I wish that were the case with me. Again, I’m not trying to say anything about how it affects everyone — just report what people are saying and say how it affects me. When I wake up in the morning, I can read as long as I do it before the computer is on. Once I log on, it’s hopeless. The cycle starts. Check Email 1, 2 and 3, check all the sites I’m working on, check all the sites I’m interested in, check facebook (I stayed away from Twitter, thank God), then go back to email. It’s terrible. And once I’m stuck in it, I can kiss any real good reading goodbye. I just can’t focus on it. Maybe I need some Ritalin or something. Or maybe I should just go after my computer with a sledgehammer. But then I’d still have my phone. Damn it!
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