Carr, N. (2008) Is Google Making Us Stupid? , available at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google.
with brief remarks from
(1) Mark Dubin: Insights and Disagreement from Neuroscience
(2) Walter Kintsch: Insights and Disagreement from Psychology
(3) Gerhard Fischer: Insights and Disagreement from L3D
Here are a few interesting quotes from the paper to reflect upon:
the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many,
The more people use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing.
Anecdotes alone don't prove much. And we still await the long-term neurological and psychological experiments that will provide a definitive picture of how Internet use affects cognition.
It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of "reading" are emerging as users "power browse" horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins.
The Net's influence doesn't end at the edges of a computer screen, either. As people's minds become attuned to the crazy quilt of Internet media, traditional media have to adapt to the audience's new expectations.