Somehow, I recently ended up with a subscription to the Atlantic Monthly. This month, Nicholas Carr wrote an article about the possibility that Google and the Internet in general is making us stupid. His point is generally grounded on the observation that he can't focus enough to read long novels, articles, or whatever, whereas in the past, he could.

I have this problem too.

He has lots of friends who profess to have this problem.

I have lots of friends who profess to have this problem.

He blames the Internet and the ready availability of skimmable information.

"And what 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."

He quotes scientists that back up his observation, and cultural experts such a the playwright Richard Foreman, who recently wrote that we risk "turning into pancake people--spread wide and thin as we connect with the vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button." We had a guy in my MBA class who was the epitome of this, we referred to him as, "oh yes, R is an ocean of information, but only one foot deep."

So, having just graduated and during school being forced to read LONG BORING HUGE BOOKS, I have an opinion on this:

I have felt this happen.

I don't blame the internet.

It's about discipline.

If you feel that skill fading--go get a book. Turn off the tv. Sit down, make yourself focus. Harpers just ran an Ursula Le Guin article that quoted some really dire statistics about how many book Americans read. (Only 56.6% of Americans had read any book). It's not Google making us stupid, it's our own laziness.
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