Consequences of High-Speed Information Gathering

Reading has never been a great passion of mine, but I have always been interested in books. I wish now that I would have read more books in high school, when I had more time for leisure reading and had the chance to really sit down and dive deep into the words on the pages.

I did manage to read one book this summer and was proud of myself, even if it wasn’t on the lengthy side. Hunter S. Thompson’s, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” really had my mind swirling with images. I was introduced to Gonzo Journalism, where wild fiction meets a journalistic narrative.


But these days, I can’t even sit down long enough to read the newspaper. My tolerance for longer word counts and winded explanations has diminished. How sad is it that I was actually proud of myself for reading one book with less than two hundred pages in just about three months? (Mind you, I did take a month break from my endeavor… Yes, an entire month!) For me, reading has become a sort of inconvenience.

No, this wasn’t an overnight change. My shortened attention span has everything to do with the methods I use to gather most of my daily information.

One of the first things I do when I wake up in the morning—after showering and brushing my teeth of course—is hop on the Internet. I absolutely have to check my email and see if there are any big headlines in the news. However, when I do find some news that interests me, I try to find the shortest, most concise article as possible. I convince myself that I don’t have time to read anything with more than three pages of text.

And how dare the article take more than ten seconds to load! Then I have to click the link 50 times until my computer freezes up in overload before I can ctrl + alt + del to restart the computer and try it all again. Whew!

Patience is a thing of the past, my friends, as new technologies make gathering information much easier and more quickly. And not only is patience lost, but the ability—or drive—to really sit and think about what it is you are reading has also vanished.

Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” argues that the problem is our everyday Google searching for high speed information has rendered us people who can’t stand the have information delayed. There is no time for us to sit and use over what we have read.

The information must be presented in a clear and “timely” manner. If I have not gotten the point of the article in the first two paragraphs, the writer has failed me.

This impatient attitude I have adapted is affecting my everyday life. I find myself increasingly less tolerant of waiting, whether it is waiting for Photoshop to open, for the “walk” light at the crosswalk, and even for the elevator to reach my floor.

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. You have to press buttons at least five times for them to efficiently do their job. Because pressing the call button more than once will speed up the elevator cart. It’s true.

I have become so hostile toward technology that I get angry with my computer if a web page takes more than ten seconds to load. I curse it for being an inferior machine and for wasting my time. Computer, I’m sorry.

I feel this same hostility for articles I find online. I have to scroll to the bottom of the page to see what I’m really getting myself into. I have started to allow length to dictate the kind of information I am taking in. I no longer choose to read longer, more in depth articles and instead reach for the short blurb that really doesn't give much useful information at all.

If this is the same way youth across the U.S. feel, the country may be on its way to a cultural dis-enlightenment. The ability to have the patience--and the drive--to read in depth novels, journal entries, and other literary works means the ability to process information and leads to creativity. If we continue down this path of "hurry up and tell me what I want to know" reading, we will slowly deteriorate into beings that need to be hand fed information.

Students will no longer be able to read the scholarly articles necessary for writing a clear argument in their class papers. They will rely on short, easy to read blurbs authored by questionable sources. Wikipedia will become a main source of information, not a background source to help give a basic understanding of materials. Ideas will be unfounded and lack crucial details that only articles written by experts can give.

Some argue that reading online is vastly different than sitting down with a newspaper or novel--that the motives behind the method of gathering information differ. People go online to find out information quickly. They may look to become an "expert" in a certain area, searching for as many articles one a single subject or idea as possible. They don't look to sit down and ponder the words on the paper in front of them. They don't look to dive deep into a book, using the imagination to bring forth images of worlds unknown or muse over the lyrics in a sonnet. They want quick and easy to locate information.

Some may argue that Google-ing—being able to gather small bits of information, piecing them together while throwing out the non-reputable sources, to then have a sort of expertise in a subject.

“So, yes, you should be skeptical of my skepticism. Perhaps those who dismiss critics of the Internet as Luddites or nostalgists will be proved correct, and from our hyperactive, data-stoked minds will spring a golden age of intellectual discovery and universal wisdom,” Carr said in his article.

But what it really comes down to is exercising the brain. Sure, one might say, “Well at least reading online is reading.” But this only means that we will not be illiterate. This doesn’t mean that we are actually expanding our minds. Anyone can read words on a piece of paper, but we should be striving to be intellectuals—to be making inferences and about the things we are reading. And this is Carr’s main point.

“In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas. Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking. If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with ‘content,’ we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture.”

Though “stupid” may be a harsh word to use, Carr’s argument that all the Internet reading and gathering of information is having an effect on how we think—and our level of patience—rings true. We rely so heavily on quick sources of information that we are beginning to lose are abilities to make our own inferences about the words we are reading. It is important for the “reading to expand the mind” way of thinking to not be forgotten.

And while I will still check the Internet in the morning to see if there are any big headlines, I will spend more time immersing myself in the great literary works that I missed out on in high school.

Transformative Reading

When someone is asked to discuss a reading that has impacted his or her life, I’m sure many would describe a text that was up-lifting.

But the reading that has impacted me the most does not meet my naive expectation.

Some back ground information: I am taking a general education course that chronicles the history of Los Angeles through fiction, film and music. “Oh, won’t it be great to learn about the glitz, glamour and scandal of Hollywood?” I asked myself.

Not so. The very first topic we were given is the LA Riots of 1992. And our very first reading was Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 by Anna Deavere Smith.



Twilight was written as a play in the months following the riots. Deavere interviewed many people with all sorts of backgrounds. From the middle-aged male Korean store owner who was shot in the face during one of the many lootings, to the hoity-toity female real estate agent who hid in the safety of the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hilton, Deaver covered almost every base imaginable.

Deavere used spellings and included the interviewees “ticks” to give the reader a real sense of their personality. None of the interviews were edited.

Never in my life have I seen a collection of so many passionate accounts and opinions gathered in one place.

It was almost frightening to read some of the responses. Finding out that the chief of police was more worried about making an appearance at a benefit dinner than with the events unfolding outside of his very office sickened me.

And to see that the president of the United States at the time did not invite the only
California's African American member of Congress to a special meeting addressing the events surrounding the riots offended me.

It was very disheartening to see how much disregard there was for a huge chunk of citizens in one of the largest cities in the United States. Further, it made me sick to think of all of the injustices that were happening all over the country due to police violence and racism. And the lack of what we call democracy in our government at the time (and one might argue into the present) really disappointed me.

Though I am not old enough to even remember the riots, let alone understand the reasons behind them, I am now able to look back on the events to really get a sense of what this country and this society are really about.