For years, I subscribed to two daily newspapers, one local and the other national. Now, I get neither. Rarely, if for instance I’m in an airport, will I buy a newspaper. I read as many newspapers as I used to, though—almost certainly more. But I read them differently because I read them online.

This is a different experience from paper newspapers. No longer do I separate out sections and prioritize what I want to read on the basis of these sections. There are certainly vestigial impulses of these former practices: I continue to read certain items—opinion, sports, finance—and, as before, the order may vary depending on circumstances and my mood. But in general, I take in what’s on the screen and move from page to page and site to site by the links. I probably read more but in less depth and with less comprehension.

Often I find I’ve forgotten what I have just read and even why I clicked to the page that’s current in my browser. You can argue that this same sort of forgetfulness occurs with paper content too. It does, but it’s different. The one results from disinterest, distraction, or fatigue, and the other more from the internet’s apparently infinite amount of information and the ease and immediateness and finally the triviality of the acquisition of that information.

The internet, in effect, objectively promotes cursory reading. Anything you want from a long-forgotten quote to baseball statistics from 1924 to ingredient proportions in a complex cooking recipe is essentially instantaneously available. (But has there ever been a more potent waster of time than surfing the web?) One is overwhelmed by the possibilities. The internet encourages acquiring information quickly and in bits and pieces (that may or may not be related), but those bits and pieces are not necessarily integrated or even retained. (If we were not already a nation of ADHD sufferers, web surfing should see to it that we are.)

Often some of the bits and pieces may not be consciously acquired in the first place. Since this rumination appears on the Heronswood Voice, take the Heronswood website as an example. I have looked at this site many times without ever “reading” some of what was in front of me. Only gradually has the content penetrated my awareness. A case in point is the “Plant Care” section {http://www.heronswood.com/heronswood-plant-care/}.  Here there is an enormous amount of really useful information on plants and their culture. There is generally a description of the family or genus that illustrates horticultural value, and important cultivars may be identified. Tips on planting and post-planting care are provided. Finally, there is a link to what Heronswood has available. This is definitely value added, but more than once I completely overlooked it, which would not have happened I think had it been on paper.

It has occurred to me that I may have lost some cognitive abilities, that I may be getting dumber. My observations about web surfing are not novel. Nicholas Carr in The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (2010) argues that a long-term effect of the internet will be to decrease our attention spans and lower our collective intelligence. And experimental evidence suggests that the human brain adapts on a cellular level to its environment and the skills required to surf the web are “rewiring” certain neural pathways to the detriment of others that facilitate different abilities.

Not everyone agrees with Carr’s thesis (see http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1499/google-does-it-make-us-stupid-experts-stakeholders-mostly-say-no; verified 27 December 2010). Some disagree vehemently and believe the more electronic media the better— iPads all around. Clearly also, there are certain occupations that require just the sort of rapid acquisition of information that the internet seems to foster; air traffic control is an example.

When the internet first became widespread, 15 years ago or so, there were grand predictions of how the technology would change the planet. Many were futuristic utopian visions, but some were darker and envisioned Brave New World type scenarios. A more mundane part of the debate centered on how long there would be a need or use for paper newspapers, magazines, and books. The consensus was not very long. Paper is still with us, though, and in terms of archival utility, nothing trumps paper; think Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest of which were written some 2200 years ago. Anticipation almost never lives up to reality.

So am I getting dumber? I don’t really think so. No more so than I think that the web has united the peoples of the world in peace and harmony or, alternatively, that everybody lives only in cyberspace through idealized avatar fantasies. I do lots of things in addition to surfing the web and reading newspapers online, so there is a balance. But it’s true that I might make a better air traffic controller now than I would have before 15 years of web surfing. I subscribe to the dictum on Apollo’s temple at Delphi: “nothing in excess”.  I looked up the English translation on the internet.