I am constantly putting down a book that isn't that good. Is it an effect of the time I spend online? I don't think so. When I do get a good piece of fiction that I truly like, I'll be up all night reading it - can't put it down, just like the pre-online days. The problem to me is finding said fiction.

Once upon a time I would go by my local newstand (Clemson, SC) on a weekly basis. Rarely did I leave without at least 2-3 murder mysteries or decent science fiction. I've not read a decent mystery in months. Once in awhile I pick up a half-way decent piece of sci fi or horror, but not often. Nonfiction seems to be easier to find.

Maybe we are just better writers now and don't have the patience for 'junk' we once had.

SJR
The Pink Flamingo

My own experience closely mirrors Ezra Klein’s. I can still sit down with a stack of books as efficiently before if I’ve got a major research project or book review due. But, increasingly, the Internet is my source of first resort for looking up facts, keeping up with the news, and the like. It’s simply a much more efficient means of accessing current information than combing the stacks at the library.

Indeed. Add to that the idea that it offers a number of sources of information that you'd likely not have considered even looking at, were you restricted to the printed page. And therein lies something which I think goes missing from a lot of these "woe is the human race, nobody reads books anymore" memed bits... We're actually getting smarter than books ever allowed us to.

Look, I admit there is a certain art level in doing the kind of book-based research that you describe, James... an art that is disappearing, certainly, and I can see where some would see a loss in that. It takes a fair amount of smarts to do research in that fashion.

But Think: What is the purpose of the book? What is the purpose of the printed page? It is to impart information. We humans have evolved our information gathering and dissemination ability to the next level. I refuse to see this as a bad thing.

As an example of the way things are going; I have an entire wall of my home office covered with various computer publications. A glance through their titles suggests that there is no realm more affected by time, then the realm of technology. Books I spent literally hundreds for, just a few short years ago, "Lantastic 5.0", a complete collection of Novell networking and training books, for versions 3 through 5. MCSA books for WinNT and 2000, The inner workings of DOS 6, and so on. PASCAL cookbooks.

A collection of books written by James Martin for the Bell labs is particularly amusing in that way: "Systems Analysis for data transmission", "Telecommunications and the computer", and Transmission systems for communications. While very technical, and while very good at passing along basic theory, Martin's books were a primer on getting data and digital connectivity in an analogue world.

All these books, on the open market are nigh on worthless, today. I keep them as a reminder of how quickly such investments sour. They stand as mute proof that things in the technological world have been changing so quickly as to make the printed word not only worthless, but six months away from publication, counter-productive for being woefully outdated.

Don't misunderstand; I don't see books as a bad thing. But if the single most efficient way of obtaining information and spreading it around, is what you're after, the printed word ain't it anymore, sorry.

In reading the Atlantic article the tone of the thing kept leaping out at me... print media's dying because we're all a bunch of idiots. Such arguments have certainly graced the pages of other publications, previously. The New York Times, for example, used it recently in an attempt to explain it's ever tighter drain circling of late.

I dunno... chalk my response up to my usual level of misanthropy, I suppose. But I've seen this kind of article come out before and have found myself unmoved to accept the overall breast- beating tone.

The transition from oral to literate had cognitive implications beyond just being able to read and I think we can expect the transition from literate to visual imagery will engender new developments.

Not all of the news is particularly good. Abstract reasoning, for example, is demonstrably an artifact of literacy.

My attention span is just fine, thanks for asking, but Google isn't making my any dumber, only changing where I go for particular types of information.

There's still no decent Arabic dictionary online and forget online Arabic --> English translation. So my Arabic dictionaries get quite a workout, too.