Seriously, though (yes, I did read it)–an interesting confirmation from a presentation on e-book usage by Kim Collins of Emory University: she found e-books to be surprisingly widely used, across many disciplines, including humanities and social sciences; but the kicker was that the average amount of time a user spent with an e-book was 27 MINUTES for a book Emory owned, and 3 minutes for one they didn’t own. Sounds like skimming. . . .

I agree with that whole-heartedly. On the other hand, I recall spending my pre-Internet days searching an awful lot longer for information.

Of course, back in those days, we didn’t have to evaluate anything because it all came from pretty authoritative sources (even if they disagreed, we knew they were legit enough to cite).

I guess my point is that sure, that report is true–but it would be yet truer had it taken place two decades ago.

While Carr’s piece may have been a little overwrought (and so drawn out that I became immediately guilty of what he decries), he nevertheless has a point. Studies such as the recent JISC report (http://www.bl.uk/news/2008/pressrelease20080116.html) seem to show that students now spend more time searching for information online than actually reading and rarely evaluate it to any degree – a recent student panel I attended confirmed this. This sort of short-attention-span surface scanning may suffice – and is probably even optimal – when one is simply searching for information in the form of ‘facts’. However, it actively discourages us from taking the time to follow the reasoned argument, rhetoric and other ‘writing’ that form the bedrock of many subjects in the humanities. So Google may not make us thick, but it may force us to recast such text in headline and soundbite chunks, in which the critical intellectual contribution is lost.