KUNR: Changes to How We Read (2009-06-08)

Dr. Rebecca Jankovich, PhD can be reached at 322-1839

Carr, N. "What the Internet is doing to our Brains". The Atlantic, July/August 2008, 56-63.

The internet may be changing the way we expect our minds to think. Now we can access information more quickly than ever before, without going to the Library and searching through card files or the stacks. We use our laptop, our pda, our computer and wham, we're on the internet using a search engine to find a bit of data on anything that interests us.
Dr. Wolfe, a developmental psychologist, at Tufts University argues that using the Net may be changing the ways in which we read. Her research stresses that we are not only what we read, but also how we read. We may be reading more given the plethora of text messages, emails, Facebook comments, and Net surfing, but we're reading in shorter bursts in a style that emphasizes immediacy and efficiency. Reading is not an instinctive skill like speaking; we actually have to teach ourselves how to translate written words, or characters as in Asian writing, into language and ideas; the brain has to work at this. And the way we read, can change the ways in which our brain processes information. Reading a long, complicated piece of work without distractions in the background, is a far different process from reading abstracts of the news on the Net while your email beeps that you've received a new message or your cell phone rings telling you a new text arrived. Dr. Wolfe thinks if we only read in the style of the Net, we become mere encoders of bits of data rather than using deep reading to ponder ideas, or contemplate meaning.
This view of the reading style of the Net as one in which we skim rather than deep read is supported by research from the University College of London. These researchers studied how two hugely popular Net sites in the UK were used over a 5 year period; both sites provided access to journal articles, e-books and other forms of written information. What they found was that users typically skimmed the material, hopping around from site to site and rarely returning to complete the reading of any given source; they'd read 1 or 2 pages of an article, not finish the whole thing, and bounce to another site. The researchers concluded the Net may be changing our reading style to that of "power browsing" horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts, going for a quick overview rather than reading in the traditional sense.
Whenever technology changes, there are those who say it's good and those who say it's bad. Socrates thought the written word would undermine memory and wisdom. Some thought the printing press and availability of affordable books would generate intellectual laziness. The typewriter may have altered the way people composed literature. Television perhaps has caused us to read fewer books and newspapers. And now the Net may change the ways in which we read.
We're not going to be able to stop the movement towards getting information from the Net. The Net is probably going to change the way we expect to receive information. Even the New York Times changed its formatting to include several pages of abstracted articles so readers didn't have to turn pages and could get the gist of the story without reading an indepth article. What we can control is whether we still spend time reading printed pages, not just for the information we might gain, but for the experience of contemplating the author's ideas, the associations in our minds that come from considering the ideas, the quiet spaces we find while reading where we spin off in our heads thinking about our past, who we are, who we want to be. Dr. Wolfe believes deep reading is the same as deep thinking, that we lose something important if we go for efficient skimming and give up deep thinking.
What was the last good, thought provoking book you actually read--Not listened to on your ipod, or read the review on the Net? When was the last time you sat down and read for a few hours when you weren't on vacation? Do you have the mental energy to read a book that isn't a mystery or a romance? Is there a place in your home where it's comfortable to sit and read, where the lighting is good and you're not in the midst of distractions? When was the last time you and your mate read the same book and talked about it? Do you see your kids sitting down and reading books that aren't a school assignment?
Perhaps the best approach is to incorporate the information from the Net and deep reading. To learn the technology of accessing internet data is necessary to keep up with the ways in which people communicate and get information. But to keep reading, in deep quiet ways, is also necessary to carve out quiet time in which someone else's words propel us into thinking about the world and ourselves.