Idiots Rule

I wish I could tell you that I found this on Google, but I didn't.  It's an article claiming that there's a possibility we are dumber because of the Internet, more specifically Google.  Really, that's all you need to know.  You should probably not click on the link.  Don't want you getting dumber on me:

I’m not the only one. When I mention my troubles with reading to friends and acquaintances—literary types, most of them—many say they’re having similar experiences. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun mentioning the phenomenon. Scott Karp, who writes a blog about online media, recently confessed that he has stopped reading books altogether. “I was a lit major in college, and used to be [a] voracious book reader,” he wrote. “What happened?” He speculates on the answer: “What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?”

Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine, also has described how the Internet has altered his mental habits. “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print,” he wrote earlier this year. A pathologist who has long been on the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School, Friedman elaborated on his comment in a telephone conversation with me. His thinking, he said, has taken on a “staccato” quality, reflecting the way he quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online. “I can’t read War and Peace anymore,” he admitted. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”

Comments

[Cynthia Closkey]

I tried reading that article last night. I made it about two paragraphs beyond the part you excerpted before I had to close the browser in disgust. Painfully silly premise.

Still, I feel I should go back and finish it, if only so I can demonstrate that I can still concentrate for the length of an Atlantic article -- even a lame one.

[ed]

Sweet Jesus. What's with the Atlantic these days? Between this and the Lori Gottlieb nonsense, they've really gone downhill.

[RMEllis]

Yeah, that's dumb. He can certainly read War and Peace, he just doesn't want to. And doesn't need to.

I think the Atlantic is trying to find their own Malcolm Gladwell, and failing.