Reading Carr’s article about whether Google is making us stupid, I couldn’t help but relate to some of Carr’s arguments.
Over the years, as my Internet consumption has increased, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to read books or long pieces of literature without becoming distracted. I honestly have worried for a few years now that maybe I’ve developed some sort of minor ADD or something. There are times when it really bothers me, and there are other times when I can fight through it and force myself to focus. It hasn’t really affected my grades, so I haven’t taken it too seriously. I never, though, drew a connection between it and my growing internet consumption.
Maybe the Internet, and it’s utilization of brief pieces of writing, is responsible for my difficulty in focusing on longer reading. Maybe it isn’t. But after being a kid who would read 60 books in the two, two-and-a-half months that I had summer vacation, I have to wonder if the Internet isn’t part of my problem. And it makes me wonder, with my generation (Generation Y) being coined the “Medicated Generation” or “Generation Rx,” if the Internet and our increased demand for short-and-sweet isn’t part of the problem with so many parents medicating their children. ADD and similar disorders are on the rise among children… perhaps we’re just misdiagnosing “information sickness” for a more serious problem (like ADD) in these children.
While this isn’t relevant to ADD or the effects the Internet is having on us, it is something I thought of as I read Carr’s article… He discussed old media having to play by the rules of new media in order to survive (such as the example of the NY Times re-designing their second and third pages of the front section to be brief news snippets so readers can quickly scan them). Well, recently for my new media class, I read an article about how advertisers are beginning to incorporate video advertisements into print magazines. Apparently, this fall, CBS put a video advertisement in the Entertainment Weekly Magazine in a few cities in the U.S.
Maybe its not so much that Google and the Internet is making us stupid. I think we just don’t know how to utilize it yet. As for my issues with reading, I’ m going to continue to adapt to reading (and writing) concise pieces, while trying to maintain my love of books (and my favorite book, “Gone with the Wind.”)
The linkage you suggest to ADD is provocative and important. I think if McLuhan were alive today, this would be his major issue. He’d attack the whole ADD/medication complex as a fundamental misunderstanding of the ways that the Internet “extends” us. Thought provoking stuff here, Ashley, thanks.