Nick Carr's rather provocative article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" suggests that our generation's cultural values, that is to say, augmenting social interaction with Facebook or micro-blogging with Twitter, has altered the brain's ability to process information. In doing so, activities such as close reading and dedicated writing are slowly on their way out, being supplanted by a surface glosses of Wikipedia articles, quick, instant, and arguably, efficient methods of processing a lot of information in a relatively short amount of time. Carr is a renowned scholar that's pretty well-versed on issues of the Internet, but the article in question is inherently contentious. A title of "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" is a pretty leading question, one that sets up this conflict between those that value deep thinking versus those that would prefer to skim something, learn the gist of it, and move along. Certainly he has more credibility than the old farts they bring in on CNN that hate on the digital the same way your senile grandpa used to hate on comic books before he molested you. But there is a degree of romanticization that the author uses that undermines the credibility of the argument. But instead of referring back to the author every time I want to make a point, I think it's just easier to generalize.
First of all, the idea of the brain being altered based on external pressures and stimuli is entirely plausible. The invention of the clock made it easier to visualize the concept of time on a micro level - our human brains are incapable of processing time on the cosmic scale, so something like the clock allows us to think smaller. And as it became commonplace, our brains adjust to the concept of it, evolving to better fit the conditions. That's where the issue comes up in this idea of distracted reading - as the Internet becomes the new media of the day, that is to say, the dominant form of information consumption and production, our brains adjust to the rapid-fire nature of it. It's fairly normal to be on Facebook before switching tabs over to Reddit, ESPN, and whatever porn you have saved. If you want to learn about something quickly, you look up the Wikipedia entry before clicking on the links that are semi-related at the bottom of the page. These reading practices are becoming more and more common, allowing that "instant gratification" tendency to grow and grow. Who needs to read novels any more when you can just browse story after story on Reddit? The nature of the Internet allows us to to tap into that primordial need for quick satisfaction, and not just for recreation either. How many people use Wikipedia as a baseline for understanding something that was mentioned in class? Who would rather type in a Spanish phrase in an online translator than tediously flick through a dictionary? The physical media is dying, and our brains are quickly adjusting to it.
The argument that Carr posits rallies against these ideas entirely. Deep, attentive reading is a dying art form. The long-form novel is going the way of Latin. Scholars won't write traditional pieces but will incorporate some multimedia component. To be very general, the argument is such that traditions are dying. Modes of reading, modes of learning, are being replaced, and that's bad, for whatever reason. There is a significant amount of romanticization of hard work and labor in the arguments that take a stance against the ever-growing reach of the digital; this is coupled with an equally virulent amount of criticism and derision against "distracted" reading. I certainly agree that hard work is a virtue that should be celebrated, but the issue is so much simpler. The Gutenberg press revolutionized printing and the way scholarship was practiced. But when it originated, there were just as many naysayers then as there are now. The same people that rail against the evolution of learning are the same ones that will resignedly admit that they were wrong when we all start reading from Kindles.
Moreover, I don't think they're giving people enough credit. It's not as if the distractions from the Internet instantaneously, overnight, will turn us all into eye-twitching coke-sniffing hoodrats, People are still entirely capable of being trained to read attentively and fully - what do you think college students are forced to do when finals come around? Certainly they get distracted while they contemplate suicide in the library, but during those moments where hanging themselves isn't the main thing on their mind, they're reading. They're understanding. It's pointless to dramatize and turn nothing into a problem. People will understand what you're doing and dismiss it. Just like everything else, old people ruin all the fun.
