Slashdot Mirror
Online Skim Reading Is Taking Over the Human Brain
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Michael S. Rosenwald reports in the Washington Post that, according to cognitive neuroscientists, humans seem to be developing digital brains with new circuits for skimming through the torrent of information online at the expense of traditional deep reading circuitry... Maryanne Wolf, one of the world's foremost experts on the study of reading, was startled last year to discover her brain was apparently adapting, too. After a day of scrolling through the Web and hundreds of e-mails, she sat down one evening to read Hermann Hesse's challenging novel The Glass Bead Game. 'I'm not kidding: I couldn't do it,' says Wolf. 'It was torture getting through the first page. I couldn't force myself to slow down so that I wasn't skimming, picking out key words, organizing my eye movements to generate the most information at the highest speed. I was so disgusted with myself.'
The brain was not designed for reading and there are no genes for reading like there are for language or vision. ... Before the Internet, the brain read mostly in linear ways — one page led to the next page, and so on. The Internet is different. With so much information, hyperlinked text, videos alongside words and interactivity everywhere, our brains form shortcuts to deal with it all — scanning, searching for key words, scrolling up and down quickly. This is nonlinear reading, and it has been documented in academic studies. ... Some researchers believe that for many people, this style of reading is beginning to invade our ability to deal with other mediums. 'We're spending so much time touching, pushing, linking, scrolling and jumping through text that when we sit down with a novel, your daily habits of jumping, clicking, linking is just ingrained in you,' says Andrew Dillon."
The brain was not designed for reading and there are no genes for reading like there are for language or vision. ... Before the Internet, the brain read mostly in linear ways — one page led to the next page, and so on. The Internet is different. With so much information, hyperlinked text, videos alongside words and interactivity everywhere, our brains form shortcuts to deal with it all — scanning, searching for key words, scrolling up and down quickly. This is nonlinear reading, and it has been documented in academic studies. ... Some researchers believe that for many people, this style of reading is beginning to invade our ability to deal with other mediums. 'We're spending so much time touching, pushing, linking, scrolling and jumping through text that when we sit down with a novel, your daily habits of jumping, clicking, linking is just ingrained in you,' says Andrew Dillon."
get over it.
I am a fast reader (>400words per minute), and when i skim a screenful of information or code I exceed this significantly.
There are some things which you need to understand:
* Reading may be fast, but comprehending may be tricky. If a page of code contains a tricky algorithm, it can take a week
* Classic literature (for which my speed drops below 200 word per minute) is not structured for being read quickly. If may be structured to model a thought process, or even a pattern of spoken language. Take your time to read it, and accept it.
* Literature often has dialogues, or reflections of dialogues. keepign two viepoints necessarily disrupts your reading speed. Books which have a lot of decription of though processes or viewpoints of characters contain more information. The more brilliant of these books manage to refer indirectly to the processes and let you infer a large part of what is going on (e.g. "Midnights Chrildren"). Obviously the limiting factor is not reading, but understanding.
As a culture have improved our speed-reading skills? I don't see how this is a problem, especially as a student who can apply these concepts and skills to textbooks. Disclaimer: I skimmed this summary and TFA may address this.
The summary makes it clear that the 'problem' is that the improved skim reading may come at the expense of in-depth reading.
The brain was not designed for reading
It wasn't designed for anything.
And who's to say the invention of writing hasn't already had some impact on human evolution? I know it hasn't been long in the grand scheme of things, but moths didn't take long to adapt to the industrial revolution.
there are no genes for reading like there are for language or vision
Well, there are genes which have an impact on language development if faulty or missing, but are they necessarily "genes for language"?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
It depends on the book. I for one started reading Arthur C Clarke's Rama series, and I couldn't put it down.
It's taking over the brains of those who participate 24/7 in, for lack of a better word, might be called the Twittersphere. I'm not condemning Twitter in general, but the entire weltanschauung of the situation that people like Maryanne Wolfe live in. Anyone who doesn't exist in this false world (i.e. most of humanity) doesn't have this experience at all. They're able to read deep texts, and you bet your ass they'll be ready to supplant these feeble minds in the future.
The really scary part is that these Twitter minds lack the ability to see outside themselves. If it happens to me, then it happens to all of humanity. After all, all the people I know are in the Twittersphere, and that's the whole world...or at least the world worth knowing. Because if Maryanne Wolfe can't do it, that means the human brain is changing. Sad...but then again I find myself understanding why civilizations that have everything fall. It comes from taking it all for granted and neglecting the first principles that got us here...like realizing the world has an independent existence outside of you and your little buddies.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!