The internet has changed how we research, but has it also altered the way we read?  The way we think? 

This Nicholas Carr’s argument in Atlantic Magazine (July/August 2008 www.theatlantic.com/magazine ).  We are becoming masters of the “power browse” and on the face of it, that SEEMS like a good thing: our brains are taking in more information, processing and downloading efficiently.  Think about it.  You can find on the web in minutes what used to take hours in the library. 

However, Carr quotes bloggers, writers and others who say they now have trouble staying focused on long pieces of writing, skim everything and quickly lose interest.  Bruce Friedman, a blogger on computers in medicine says “I have now almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print.”  Some say today they would not have the capacity to read War and Peace.

While long term neurological and psychological experiments on cognition will take years to be completed and published, Carr quotes a five-year research program where scholars examined computer logs documenting the behavior of visitors to a web site.  They found people were hopping from one web source to another and rarely returned to any source they’d already visited. 

What does this mean for leaders who are trying to communicate with a workforce?  If people are scanning the text of an email (and believe they have the ability to instantly “comprehend”) you can be sure that a large percentage will look for key words, and if they don’t find them, miss the point (or something important like the scheduled call, or project deadline).  They might scan the headlines of the the company newsletter, read the first paragraph of a few articles and decide whether to “skim on.”   This of course makes it harder than ever to keep people informed, or get them on the same page about ANYTHING.

Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University says we are not only what we read, but HOW we read.  If we put efficiency and immediacy above all else it may weaken our capacity to read for deep meaning.  In other words, we become  “mere decoders of information.”  Carr argues if we lose those quiet spaces of contemplation we will sacrifice something important not only in ourselves but in our culture.

Here’s what I’d like to know:

• Are YOU worried about this? 
• Have you already factored this behavior in when you communicate with employees, clients, customers and vendors?  
• What is the potential impact on your business if people don’t make it a practice to thoroughly read emails and other internal communications that you send? 

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