For anyone interested in literacy who missed this article—there was a piece in The New York Times yesterday about internet literacy (“Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?”).
“Neurological studies show that learning to read changes the brain’s circuitry. Scientists speculate that reading on the Internet may also affect the brain’s hard wiring in a way that is different from book reading.”
Here we encounter again the question of how and to what extent literacy and the written word (something altogether separate from spoken language, a more innate ability) changes the wiring of the brain. Now the question has become whether and how reading on the internet—since it uses different skills than reading in print—affects our brain’s circuitry in a different way. As a child of the web generation, this really hits home for me. Worth a look.
--Amy
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It was never something that I really noticed, but after reading the article, I began to notice it. With Internet articles, I usually don't read the entire thing, but rather skims through it to see the key information. Maybe it's because whenever I look something up on the Internet, I usually know what to expect and so just look for the relevant information, already compact and straightforward on the web. On the other hand, books are longer and requires more concentration. Sometimes I begin a book and, because it's so slow, I stop reading. After using the Internet for so long, I suppose I'm used to having the information at my fingertips, quickly and without any effort on my part.
-Angela
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