Nicholas Carr started noticing the change in the way he thinks a few years ago, starting with his decreased ability to focus while reading books.
When he mentioned his problem to his friends - most of them literary types - many said they're having the same problem ... the InterWeb is making them stupid!
The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun mentioning the phenomenon. Scott Karp, who writes a blog about online media, recently confessed that he has stopped reading books altogether. “I was a lit major in college, and used to be [a] voracious book reader,” he wrote. “What happened?” He speculates on the answer: “What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?”
Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine, also has described how the Internet has altered his mental habits. “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print,” he wrote earlier this year. A pathologist who has long been on the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School, Friedman elaborated on his comment in a telephone conversation with me. His thinking, he said, has taken on a “staccato” quality, reflecting the way he quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online. “I can’t read War and Peace anymore,” he admitted. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”
I would've told you more about it, but the article was waaay too long ;) Link
And I dislike reading long articles on the Internet. But not because they're long, but because I dislike reading on a screen, plus I have a widescreen monitor so the text comes up a lot smaller...
I've gained more vocabulary, and grammar skills.