Struggling Against the Decline of Reading

Introduction

Carr's Hypothesis and Its Appeal

Conclusion

It occurred to me that I WANT to believe Carr's theory because I needed a scapegoat, and the internet provided a convenient target. I did not want to think that I lack the discipline to focus on a piece of text for a length of time, or that maybe law school is burning me out to the extent that I now have a difficult time reading literature outside of school. Stumbling upon Carr's article gave me relief because I could then tell myself that the problem did not lie with me, but was caused by the internet. Also, seeing that people like Carr and his colleagues are having the same issues reassured me; I thought if these accomplished writers are experiencing the same thing, then maybe my problems aren't so bad after all.

Whatever the origin of the problem, however, one thing is clear: I cannot fix my declining capacity for reading by blaming the internet. It is time that I start taking practical measures to get back to reading like I once did.

But you wanted the data from the preceding period to show whether that was continuous with an already downward trend (in which case no causal hypothesis is necessary). You didn't look. In fact, of course, reading for pleasure among people 18-24 has been dropping pretty steadily for the last fifty years. Perhaps television?

Moreover, studies suggest that even when people do read, they are probably not reading as closely as they once did. The NEA report claims that in 2004, fifty-eight percent of middle and high school students surveyed admitted to using some other form of media while reading.

Television, again.

The Carr article also references an interesting and revealing study conducted by researchers at University College London. In tracking visitor activities to two websites that provide journal articles and e-books, the UCL researchers discovered that people frequently read only one or two pages of a book before switching to another one, and rarely do they ever return to the book they were reading. Hence in the researchers’ opinion, the internet seems to have given rise to a kind of reading where people “power browse” instead of sitting down and reading a book in the way that the activity is traditionally understood to mean.

Actually, that's the activity called "research."

These studies seem to corroborate the unfortunate changes that I am observing in myself.

Doubtless. We are not disputing at the moment that something is making you stupid; we'll take that on your statement. The question is whether "the Internet" is responsible. I mentioned at the beginning of the course that "the Internet" is not a thing. Careful avoidance of that reification would have allowed you not to fall into Carr's hole. "The Internet" is the social condition of pervasive interconnection. Is that resulting in your increased stupidity, that you're better connected to more people with fewer intermediaries? Or just that, despite your love of reading, you make poor use of your mental equipment, having trained neither your powers of memory nor your powers of concentration?

If we gave everyone on Earth a free hammer, there would be more pounded thumbs, right? Until people learned how to use hammers better. Conclusion?

Last time you said that carelessness made it possible for you to write better. Now you are limiting yourself to the idea that carelessness allows you to write faster. This is probably true, but it's hard to see how, for someone intending to be a lawyer, this is progress.

Given the profession that I am about to enter into, these changes are not altogether bad ones.

Because being a lawyer is about writing rapidly without taking pains?

You did indeed try to find data in support of Carr's idiotic theory. But you got one study result, which you didn't put in any context, making it pretty much useless, and another which really added nothing because the supposed data produced was not liable to meaningful interpretation. In both cases you satisfied yourself with the headline searched out by Google, without looking at or analyzing any actual results for yourself. You did not refer to any psychology or cognitive science about attention, concentration, or the nature of reading.

It is true that contemporary young adults read less, and with more difficulty. Undergraduate teachers of literature will tell you, if you inquire, that reading loads in, say, an "English Novel" offering have typically declined by an order of magnitude over the careers of people retiring now: where one major 19th century novel a week was assigned in such sophomore survey courses when I was a child, one or two major novels a term is now the most that can be expected of most students.

In my experience, undergraduates know precisely why that has happened: they weren't trained to read as children, and they really don't know how. "We should have been forced to sit in a room and read when we were kids, and we're really mad at our parents and teachers who didn't make us, because now we realize what we've been deprived of," say University of California undergraduates in course evaluations I read all the time.

What primarily prevented them from learning how to read was television, a force you do not discuss. As for yourself, you are, as I pointed out the first time, in law school, which has had a bad effect on people's ability to read extensively outside the law since before Edward Coke. "If you wanted to read James Joyce you came to the wrong place," said the then-dean of Yale Law School, Harry Hillel Wellington, at orientation on the day I arrived in September 1980. If he knew about the Internet that morning he was a lot smarter than anything he did in his entire lifetime demonstrated.

The real point of this essay is that you want to believe Carr. My question isn't whether his absurd proposition is right, which it most certainly isn't, but why you're so drawn to it. Perhaps you should try another draft that approaches the question from that angle: why do you want to believe that what's happening to your mental life is being caused by "the Internet"?

Are Our Reading Habits Changing? Some Stats and Studies

The Problem

I stumbled across Carr's article while flipping nonchalantly through an old copy of The Atlantic a few weeks ago. The catchy name of the piece jumped out at me, but it was Carr's story about his diminished attention span that soon caught my attention. His anecdote might as well have described me. A voracious reader all throughout middle and high school, I have not read a full novel for leisure in a few years. The last book I attempted to read, Anna Karenina, I barely got past the midway point of the novel before giving up for good. It is not that I no longer have the time or the passion for reading - it remains an ardor of mine and I still read a decent amount during winter and summer breaks - but my reading habits have changed. Like Carr, I have a short attention span while reading and my mind frequently wanders, no matter how interesting the text. The days of my sitting down with a Bronte or Austen and reading for both content and style seem so long ago; nowadays I find myself perusing mostly short stories and magazine articles, things that I can begin and finish in a short amount of time. I resort to poetry to satiate my craving for style and eloquence.

Some Stats and Studies

Studies also suggest that even when people do read, they are probably not reading as closely as they once did. The NEA report claims that in 2004, fifty-eight percent of middle and high school students surveyed admitted to using some other form of media while reading. The Carr article also references an interesting and revealing study conducted by researchers at University College London. In tracking visitor activities to two sites that provide journal articles and e-books, the UCL researchers discovered that people frequently read only one or two pages of a book before switching to another one, and rarely do they ever return to the source they were reading. Hence in the researchers’ opinion, the internet seems to have given rise to a kind of reading where people “power browse” instead of sitting down and reading a book in the way that the activity is traditionally understood to mean. These studies seem to corroborate the unfortunate changes that I am observing in myself.

What to make of these changes?

What does this mean for society at large, though? While these changes in reading habits might suit the legal profession in certain ways, their impact on society as a whole is very intriguing to ponder. If people are not reading as deeply as before, and are not allowing themselves the time to absorb and admire beautiful prose, will we lose eloquence as a result? Or will eloquence be redefined? If people’s reduced attention spans are preventing them from enjoying full novels, then will novels continue to be the bedrock of literature? Or will novellas and essays shape our literary future? I do believe we will see a shift in our literary habits, but I feel that it will be a change that reflects people’s needs and preferences. Technology will not bring the end of literature, but will simply reshape literature into something that resonates with tomorrow’s society – and that might means novels with shorter chapters or a proliferation of short stories like never before. More dramatically, maybe magazines will be the new novel. In any case, I do not believe that technology is making us less literary, because being “literary” is a fluid concept whose definition changes as society changes, and what form it ultimately takes is a fascinating question that might not be answered until well after our lifetime.

Law students stopped reading books during law school long before the Internet, as you can find easily enough by looking at the memoirs of paranoid law students, like One L. Anxiety, and the bad mental habits of law school, shorten attention spans, as does television. I read books on electronic devices more than I read them on paper nowadays, but I read just as deeply as I always did. If we're going to use mere personal introspection to determine whether fundamental cognitive changes are occurring in human beings, the score is tied. If we're not going to be absurd, of course, no evidence of any weight has been adduced so far for this astonishing proposition you're all but taking for granted.

So the less thinking one does the clearer and less florid one's writing? Surely you can see at a glance that's bushwah. Your writing is tighter because you can edit it when you do it electronically, while longhand writing can only be edited at the cost of recopying. But you aren't a good self-editor yet, either way, as the rather slipshod writing of this essay shows.

My attention span when writing - although better than when I am reading - is also not what it used to be. Sometimes I find myself repeating statements or reusing words because I had forgotten that I said those things already.

I'm glad to hear that technology will not bring about the end of literature, and I wish you well with whatever's crufting your brain, which is probably law school but at any rate isn't the Internet or the availability of electricity and running water in your apartment. If you want me to believe the Net is making people do less reading, show me some actual data.

Technology and the Literary Society

-- By YuShi - 17 Dec 2009

"I'm not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I'm reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I'd spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I'm always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle."

-Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic, July/August 2008.

Technology has changed the way I read...

I stumbled across Carr's article while flipping nonchalantly through an old copy of The Atlantic a few weeks ago. The catchy name of the piece jumped out at me, but it was Carr's story about his diminished attention span that soon caught my attention. His anecdote might as well have described me. A voracious reader all throughout middle and high school, I have not read a full novel for leisure in a couple years. The last book I attempted to read, Anna Karenina, I barely got past the midway point of the novel before giving up for good. It is not that I no longer have the time or the passion for reading - it remains one of my greatest ardors and I still read a decent amount during winter and summer breaks - but my reading habits have changed. Like Carr, I have a short attention span while reading and my mind frequently wanders, no matter how interesting the text. The days of my sitting down with a Bronte or Austen and reading for both content and style seem so long ago; nowadays I find myself perusing mostly short stories and magazine articles, things that I can begin and finish in a short amount of time. I resort to poetry to satiate my craving for style and eloquence.

...and also the way that I write...

My writing has also undergone a significant change over the years. Back in the days when pens and papers were still in vogue, every sentence that I wrote was painstakingly thought out to ensure that it was as well-said as it could be. That is no longer the case, as I have now become a more carefree, and maybe lazier, writer. Knowing that I can add, delete, or change anything simply with a few keyboard strokes, my writing has gotten more experimental and less planned. Instead of thinking and then writing, many times I find myself writing first and then looking back to see how good it sounds. My writing is also less florid and much tighter than before, perhaps a reflection of the fact that the writing process these days involves far less thinking that it once did. My attention span when writing - although better than when I am reading - is also not what it used to be. Sometimes I find myself repeating statements or reusing words because I had forgotten that I said those things already.

...but should I be worried?

Without a question, the glitters of technology and the internet have led to a shortening of my attention span, causing changes in my reading and writing habits. I am frustrated with my inability to finish the novels that I begin, and find it disturbing that my writing has turned more technical and, in my opinion, less eloquent. Am I becoming less literary because of technology?

That is the question I struggled with after reading Carr's article. On one hand, I am reading just as much, if not more, than I ever did. I read the newspaper everyday (thanks to nytimes.com), I read several extremely well-written blogs on a daily basis, and I read free online versions of magazines that I would never have subscribed to otherwise. In terms of writing: I have a blog that I use to keep my writing sharp, and I was never one who would have kept diaries. I email frequently; the kind for which I cannot email writing snail mails. It is technology that has afforded me the opportunity to engage in these activities. On the other hand, there is the shorter attention span...

Changes? Yes, but not necessarily bad changes.

Ultimately, I decided that - at least for myself - while my habits have certainly changed, the changes have not necessarily been for the worse. I have a much better eye for picking up information quickly, and being less deliberate with my writing means that I can now write faster and am more focused on conveying information than delivering eloquence. Given the profession that I am about to enter into, these changes may even prove practical.

What if these changes are impacting a wider segment of society? I often wonder about that and think about the ramifications for our literary future. Will we lose eloquence? Or will eloquence be redefined? Will novels continue to be the bedrock of literature? Or will novellas and essays shape our literary future? I do believe we will see a shift in our literary habits, but I feel that it will be a change that reflects people's needs and preferences. Technology will not bring the end of literature, but will simply reshape literature into something that resonates with tomorrow's society - and that might means novels with shorter chapters or a proliferation of short stories like never before. More dramatically, maybe magazines will be the new novel. In any case, I do not believe that technology is making us less literary, because being "literary" is a fluid concept whose definition changes as society changes, and what form it ultimately takes is a fascinating question that might not be answered until well after our lifetime.

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