Brain Rewires Itself, Panic at Eleven

By David Silbey. Neuroscientists are discovering that online reading rewires the brain in favor of high speed sorting and filtering, rather than deep concentrated reading:

To cognitive neuroscientists, [the rewiring] is the subject of great fascination and growing alarm. Humans, they warn, seem to be developing digital brains with new circuits for skimming through the torrent of information online. This alternative way of reading is competing with traditional deep reading circuitry developed over several millennia.

This “eye byte culture” (awesome phrase, by the way) becomes, of course, a source of panic. English professors are consulted. More...