[Publib] Reading. Was "Is Google making us stupid?"

[Miriam Bobkoff]

 On 6/14/08, Joe Schallan <jschallan at yahoo.com> wrote:
 
 > If you care about the relationship of reading to thought, you'll want to
 > read Nicholas Carr's article, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?," in the
 > July/August issue of The Atlantic (also available online at
 > http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google ).

I lately read _Proust and the squid : the story and science of the reading
brain_ by Maryanne Wolf. It is very pertinent to this discussion. She talks
about the transition from orality to literacy both in the history of the
invention of writing and in the life of each person whose brain learns to
read; about what cognitive scientists have learned from the differing ways the
brain works: for example, the experience of dyslexics and other learning
styles. Who knew science now knows so much about neural pathways and all like
that???

I gotta say that readable though Wolf is-- and she certainly is-- it is a
Project to read a 300 page nonfiction book; a Project which takes even longer
since I keep hopping up off the couch to get on the Web and follow the trains
of thought which the book suggests... Takes an entirely different sort of
reading muscle to consume a 300-page sustained discussion of a subject, no
matter how, um, discursive. 

In general, I figure I read 10 times as many fiction books as non-fiction
books; but by time investment it might be closer to 50/50 or maybe 2 to 1. And
overall the time I spend entrained to the PC because I stopped to look
something up and then didn't leave the desk chair has reduced how much reading
I do altogether. My 'books read' lists are much shorter now than they were a
decade ago.

When I change mental gears to noodle around the web, it takes a bit of mental
muscle to change back. Yes I'm reading the screen, and thinking; but it's not
the same act of reading, no more than reading Ursula LeGuin, Geraldine Brooks,
or four or five mysteries, is the same act of reading as grinding along
through a book about the evoluion of marine mammals, or a tribal history.


Miriam Bobkoff
presently contract librarian for the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe
Port Angeles, Washington