Just back from 2 weeks holiday, far away from broadband, and I am struggling to wade through the pile of technical papers that have invaded my desk. I thought it was my brain objecting to being back in the office, but maybe not – it could be Google making me stupid.
We are all aware of how the web has changed the way we access and share information, and for many internet pioneers, as far back as Vannevar Bush, this was the point. Conventional books and library systems like indexing do not represent the way people actually think, and the associative trails used in hypertext are more representative of how the brain actually works. But has the advent of the internet begun to change not just what we read, but what we are able to read?
We are accustomed to reading long passages of prose, my bookshelves are full of them. It is, after all, how I learnt to read. But I have recently questioned my ability to read long articles (web based or print), let alone actual books. In the last year I have started several books and not finished them – unthinkable a few years ago. Even on holiday, when I used to relish the chance to read new books cover to cover, I only managed to read one novel I had read before and a collection of science short stories.
The internet has trained us to “skim”, to be easily diverted by that handy blue underline. Is this a new skill we have developed, or are we losing our ability to recreate the complex pictures that long prose can paint?
At the London Book Fair I was interested to hear that, in the US at least, the introduction of Amazon’s electronic book the Kindle has not stopped us buying books -in fact Amazon themselves have said that the number of hardcopy books that sell has increased since they introduced the Kindle. But I do wonder if everyone is still actually reading them.
Beware though, the original article is a long one, you may get distracted before reaching the end…
Bah humbug! Get ye hence with all due alacrity to Lablit!! (biased opinion of course…)
I take this sort of thing with a big pinch of salt. The “Google generation” report that article mentions was looking at behaviour not ability. I don’t think we have lost our ability to read long passages of text, but we have adapted our behaviour in order to cope with the huge amounts of text being thrown at our eyes these days – much of it not deserving of much more than skimming (present company excepted)!
I don’t think we have lost our ability to read long passages of text, but we have adapted our behaviour in order to cope with the huge amounts of text being thrown at our eyes these days
True. Partly, though, it’s a problem of time management. The problem with unlimited free access to the web is that we do the internet equivalent of channel-surfing — it’s easier to do that than to concentrate on any one thing.
Since I moved to Norfolk and spend 21 hours a week on trains that do not have WiFi access I have read lots of books and written two novels. One of them is called By The Sea (originally published on LabLit) and I think it’s rather good, but then I’m biased.