"Generation Net"

         I'd like to say that I'm the second to blog it's because I'm terribly organized and responsible, but in all reality its because I keep being paranoid that I won't blog early enough to get full credit, but I also don't want the stress of being the first example that everyone looks at. Thank you Isaiah for taking that spot, and I applaud your blog; it was detailed, thought-provoking, and laid out in a very professional and organized manner. I can't promise mine will be as satisfactory since it'll be hard to follow his up, but here goes...

         I've started reading The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, which is the N-Z last name book, and I came across a term I'd never heard before but got me thinking. From what I've gleaned from this book, Carr finds the Internet as a force that shapes the way our brains work the more we use it. He's discovered that after he started to rely on the Internet and technology, his concentration and reading proficiency seem to have slightly lapsed, and he diagnoses the Internet to have spurred this change. Where he used to be able to "spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose" after reading, he's started to find himself unable to do so after the introduction of the Internet into his life.
         With this thought in mind, he mentioned what the company nGenera called "Generation Net." This would be us, as we have grown up with the Internet and its influences ever present in our lives. What struck me was that nGenera had studied the effects of the Internet on kids from Generation Net and found that due to digital immersion, we are likely to skip around and skim while reading instead of reading a page in its entirety. This by itself doesn't seem like much of a revelation, but I wondered how this way of approaching long texts may affect us in our school work and education.
         There has been this push to learn and test digitally with the integration of Common Core in our lives, yet, would staring at a digital screen feed into the urge to merely skim the text for the answers rather than reading all of the content? If so, this doesn't seem to be a smart way to test, especially when it comes to reading comprehension and other literary tests. In reflecting on Carr's observations in his own habits, I've found that I would agree with his discovery and the Internet's effect on my lifestyle. Comparatively, I've noticed that when I use information from the Internet, especially if it's from multiple sites on the same topic, I have the urge to skim more often than if I'm working out of a textbook or other hard-copy text. Of course, the depth of my reading depends on time constraints as well, but its a bit unnerving to find that I too fit into this category.
         Another correlation that Carr makes is that when you use the Internet with frequency, you are more likely to read less books because your brain has become hard-wired to want to absorb information in quick blurbs, which can be easily fulfilled by the fast pace of the Internet over a book, which takes much longer to read and is only by one source. So far I have not found this an area that I struggle in. I still enjoy reading information from books just as much as online information; however, is my willingness to read all the information on paper rather than skimming like I would do on an electronic device merely because I continue to read hard copies in addition to using the Internet?

         What is your stance? Do you see similarities in your approach to reading long passages, or have you found that there are instances in which you are more likely to skim texts over reading it completely? Do the benefits of having information from multiple sources from the Internet outweigh the fact that as a society we will lose the capacity to read a single source in depth?

-Elizabeth Reza