Search the net with the click of a mouse! It is almost too easy…

So there has been some worry about how the web influences our thinking. Not just the content of our thoughts – actually, with Google at hand, we probably think a little more factually where we used to be guesstimating – but the WAY we think.  Studies show that people don’t read more than a few paragraphs. For instance, statistically you probably don’t read this entry to the end, at least if I provide a link somewhere before that.

In the past, people read books, so the theory goes. Books are deeeep. They let you immerse yourself in the narrative, build a grand cathedral of interrelated facts (or fiction, as the case may be), with many relationships knit together, thorough analysis and a span of time.  What is not to love? But now, people click the first link they see, and if they see a block of text filling the whole screen, they press backspace.

The idea is that people are starting to do this in the rest of their life too.  Certainly newspaper and magazines are starting to include highlights and fact boxes for those who can’t take the time to read the whole article. Who is to say that we are not adopting the same attitude in human relationships.

Don’t worry about that last part, say I.  Most people were always going on tangents anyway. Besides, the few who could follow a long narrative during a conversation, were the ones who followed their own, regardless of what everyone else was talking about.

And seriously, which came first, the hyperlink or the the remote TV control?  Even though many TV channels already look like someone is clicking frenetically on the remote, with random changes of angles, colors, faces and scenes, people STILL click the remote anyway. Because they can.

The books, I give you the point.  But take a trip to the nearest book kiosk and look at what kind of books they sell, and which of these again people actually buy.  Murder mysteries and Harlequin romance. And even then, people read them on the plane, subway, doctor’s waiting room or wherever they don’t have anything else to do and people would look strangely at them if they touched themselves.

There may be some who used to read War and Peace and now are unable to read more than a couple paragraphs.  That is worrying. (They should also see a doctor and get tested if they are 40 or above, Alzheimer’s is a terrible and creeping illness.) As for my humble self, people I have met on the net – like Carl McColman, Robert W Godwin, Ryuho Okawa – have made me not only return to books, but start to build a library of timeless wisdom instead of the hundreds of fantasy and sci-fi books I used to have.

You have to take responsibility for your actions.  But at least now you have more chances to learn things from cultures far from your own, geographically or in thoughtspace. If that is what you want. Or you could read numerous explanations of why George Bush is the Antichrist and will return to imperil us all once again.  It is up to you, really. You could even log off and read a good book.

But if you just did that, you would miss out on your reward! A link! Click it click it click it! The Last Psychiatrist – whose irony, wit and clarity of thought surpass even my own! (You know how hard that can be… but then again, you are not reading the rest of the entry after the link, so I can write whatever I want here.)