So I've been doing a lot of online reading lately, along with my standard two to three books at my bedside. I'm starting to notice the stark differences between the former and latter, and I'm finding myself a little torn. Every time I think of buying a Kindle or Nook and saving myself a lot of bookshelf space, I run across a dilemma that makes me want to regress to the pre-digital days.
My Digital Dilemma
I'll try to explain my dilemma by example. Every time I start to read a great online article or blog, I find my attention seized by another linked article within the text. Does this happen to you? The best recent example I can find is by a blogger and pastor named JR Forasteros. He has a great review of the new, controversial book Real Marriage by Mark and Grace Driscoll. I loved his review and thought it was very insightful. Still, reading the first paragraph of the review was like having my attention thrown in a washing machine. His review exemplifies what I've been doing here, which is what every blogger and news site seems to be doing...embedding links to anything and everything within their article. It's hard enough to carve out time to read in our advertising and media-saturated world. Now it's becoming harder still. I, like many young men, have the attention span of a 5-year-old. This is especially true when it comes to watching TV, walking through the movie section at Target, or looking something up on the Internet. Here's another example: Click over to AOL and try to search for something. Their Web page is filled with so much distracting, albeit amusing, fodder that you'll forget what you ever wanted to search for in the first place. I say all of this because I find it ironic, and a bit frightening, that I can't read an entire article without clicking on at least one or two links within that article before I'm finished. I get back to the first article and think, "What was this about again?"
This is the new norm. This is how Web sites track what your interests are and sell you stuff. This is how Facebook displays ads that interest you and Netflix knows just what movies and shows to recommend to you. Kind of feels like 1984, doesn't it? I'm not necessarily criticizing what bloggers and news sites are doing by embedding links to related topics. I'm just finding myself slowing down to analyze whether this is a good and helpful trend, rather than simply accepting it. As a society, we should continually slow down and analyze whether or not a new trend is useful, helpful, and, most importantly, good for us.
Let's face it...the digital revolution is altering us. It's changing the way we communicate (or the lack thereof), and it's changing the way we absorb information. So enjoy the technology, for sure. Just be sure to stop every now and then and think about what the technology is doing to you.
For My Own Curiosity
Did you make it to the end of this blog without clicking any of the links above? Was it hard to come back to this blog after reading those others?
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