Google and Stupidity

An interesting article in today's The Australian by Andrew Sullivan on how we are quickly becoming smarter info-junkie at the superficial level but ending up with more stupidity. A case of growth without depth. Here is the highlight:

I spend most of my day blogging, at a rate of about 300 posts a week. I'm certainly not more stupid than I used to be; and I'm much, much better and more instantly informed.

However, the way in which I now think and write has subtly - or not so subtly - altered. I process information far more rapidly and seem able to absorb multiple sources of information simultaneously in ways that would have shocked my teenage self.

In researching a topic, or just browsing through the blogosphere, the mind leaps and jumps and vaults from one source to another. The mental multitasking - a factoid here, a YouTube there, a link over there, an email, an instant message, a new PDF - is mind-boggling when you look at it from a distance yet perfectly natural when you're mid-blog.

When it comes to sitting down and actually reading a multiple-page print-out, or even, God help us, a book, however, my mind seizes for a moment. After a paragraph, I'm ready for a new link. But the prose in front of my nose stretches on.

I get antsy. I skim the footnotes for the quick info high that I'm used to. No good. I scan the acknowledgments, hoping for a name I recognise. I start again.

A few paragraphs later, I reach for the laptop. It's not that I cannot find the time for real reading, for a leisurely absorption of argument or narrative. It's more that my mind has been conditioned to resist it.

Is this a new way of thinking? And will it affect the way we read and write? If blogging is corrosive, the same could be said for Grand Theft Auto, texting and Facebook messaging, on which a younger generation is being reared. But the answer is surely yes, and in ways we do not yet fully understand. What we may be losing is quietness and depth in our literary, intellectual and spiritual lives.