searching for interest

After reading the Atlantic article, "Is Google Making Us Stupid" about how we get information from the Internet I was prompted to consider my own thought patterns and information absorption ability. I have, over the past three weeks, used the Internet exclusively when gathering information for my posts. Before this course I looked only occasionally for news and other political information on the web. The reason? I hate reading from a computer screen and do so only when searching for information. Reading for pleasure, in my mind, involves paper.

But what does this say about the way that I think? I don't usually enjoy using Google as a search utility because I feel that I may be guided to sites that someone else wants me to go to. Google, as I understand it, decides what website to send the seeker to based partly on what websites others have sought. I want the less used websites. I want to go to the sites that have the information that most of the other web browsers have not considered satisfactory. I want the slow, weird websites that have little focus and a questionable purpose. Do these websites exist?

I read The Onion online because I can do so for free. I like The Onion, but I read it only for a quick laugh. Nothing I read on The Onion website lasts for more that a minute or so in my brain. The Onion is set up that way whether you read it from the web or actually read it in paper form. The punchline is the quick hit of the humorous headline accompanied by a photograph. The joke is in the parody of the newspaper format. The Onion translated to the Internet more perfectly than any other newspaper because there is no need for the article when the headline is the bulk of the joke--read the five word joke and then move on to the next.


So I am not sure that I can empathize with Mr. Carr because I don't think I have fallen victim to the machine-like purpose info seek think that the author has. Not yet. I still read the same way that I always have. My mind only wanders away from what I am reading when what I am reading does not interest me. I only seek information from the Internet for practical purposes. I would never, for instance, read fiction from a computer screen. If I find something on the Internet that I think I would enjoy reading I will print it and then read it. That hasn't happened yet.