I just finished reading a reflection by Ken Myers' of Mars Hill Audio Journal on an essay in the latest edition of Atlantic ("Is Google Making us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr) on how technology and media effect and shape our mental lives. I have not yet had the chance to read the essay in question, but Ken's reflections on it are thought provoking in their own right.
"There's some science behind Carr's troubling sensation [that his own reading habits have changed for the worse under the influence of the Net]. Among other experts, he cites Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University, who "worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts 'efficiency' and 'immediacy' above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace." Note that the printing press didn't make such works (and the interior experience they enable) possible, just more widely available."
This prompted some reflection of my own on my reading habits and the internet. I'd been thinking about this on my own recently when I noticed that after an hour or so of web reading (usually of reasonably high quality writing, e.g. from the online versions of various periodicals as well as webzines like slate.com my weekly reading of Roger Ebert's reviews) I often am hard pressed to recapitulate or summarize what I've just read. It all becomes a mash of information that I've consumed in short order: the latest LA Times headline article blurring with the pithy observations of Ebert and a book review of Hans Kung's latest from the Christian Century all read within a half hour. It struck me that it would be potentially beneficial to slow down, read less, read deeper, and in particular to recap to myself what I've read, to put it into perspective. But such reading goes against the grain of the seductive possibilities of the Net--so much information, and so little time.
Myers quotes the Catholic writer Romano Guardini (from the book Prayer in Practice):
"To a large extent man lives without depth, without a center, in superficiality and chance. No longer finding the essential within himself, he grabs at all sorts of stimulants and sensations, he enjoys them briefly, tires of them, recalls his own emptiness and demands new distractions. He touches everything brought within easy reach of his mind by the constantly increasing means of transportation, information, education, and amusement, but he doesn't really absorb anything. He contents himself with having 'heard about it', he labels it with some current catchword, and shoves it aside for the next. He is a hollow man and tries to fill his emptiness with constant, reckless activity. He is happiest when in the thick of things, in the rush and noise and stimulus of quick results and successes. The moment quiet surrounds him, he is lost."
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