Writing

I'm trying to write an article. Correction, I've been trying to write an article for the past two hours but every time I start typing my mind strays onto other topics. My concentration is drifting; as I write this sentence I wonder how many of my friends have made Facebook status updates? Have I missed another hilarious treat from Stephen Fry’s Twitter feed? How many replies has my tongue-in-cheek comment on Adbuster's blog elicited? All these questions are flying about my brain drawing focus away from the task at hand – writing.

And it's not just my ability to write that's being affected by the constant interruption of digital distractions; my capacity for critical reading is also suffering. Over the past five years, I've immersed myself in the digital realm so completely that it's changing how I read online and offline.

My online reading occurs in short bursts – I scan-read webpages for interesting snippets of information and follow related links at a speed so fast, content whooshes by without so much as a Google Wave. But the way I read offline encompasses an altogether slower approach. Disconnected from the Web's overloaded circuitry I have time to deeply engage with and fully absorb longer pieces of text – or so I used to think.

Recently I've noticed a shifting of balance between these two modes of reading – my offline reading is becoming more like my online reading as my brain works hard not to fidget or wander off when confronted with a dense piece of writing. This could be down to laziness but I am not the only one for whom "the deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle".

Last year, American technology writer Nicholas Carr suggested that the Internet is re-wiring our reading habits in his controversial article 'Is Google Making Us Stupid?' Central to Carr's argument is the idea that the Internet is having unfavourable effects on cognition, which is damaging our capacity for concentration and reflection. Marshall McLuhan famously said 'the medium is the message', and as a conduit to the virtual world the Internet itself plays an active role in shaping how we receive and interpret information.

By hooking myself up to social networks and participating in virtual dialogues I am forging a reading style based on efficiency and immediacy, but does this quick-fire approach to reading allow for critical contemplation in cyberspace?

As yet I remain unconvinced that the Web is the ideal environment for deep, critical reading to occur. However, perhaps the Web's potential as a critical writing platform lies not in its role as publisher of content-heavy articles, but as the orchestrator of user-generated conversations and link sharing.

I'd much rather read a printed version of an article but I also enjoy reading user comments on blogs and often discover engaging related material as a result of such commentaries.

Just as we seek connectedness online, the physical form of reading is itself a channel for engagement and rather than pitching online and offline reading at opposite ends of the reading spectrum, the Web brings them closer together. There is nothing wrong with either approach yet sometimes I long for sustained, dense readings from pre-digital days.

It's just my online reading isn't ready to get quite so critical.