Of course there are times when I need to go in-depth. But I see skim reading as akin to flying over a landscape, checking out the entire topology of the terrain, and then swooping down only when I see something tasty, to give it my full attention.

Of course, as you’ve pointed out, this Hungry! Hungry! approach can lead to a jerky, driven, adrenaline-dependent type of consciousness, where we start to panic just slightly whenever we’re “wasting time” by lingering in one place. This is symptomatic of modern life, and unchecked, can have really negative consequences on a person’s mental or physical state. (I got Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for a few years after existing like this for years.) So personally, although I need to apply the short attention spans for getting ahead and assimilating as much knowledge as possible, I also find I have to consciously practise slowing down, and concentrating deeply. Meditation is a very good refresher for this, but so are lots of activities or anti-activities :) I suppose coding for me is a type of deep concentration, that can easily take up the major portion of a day in one go, but it’s also got my mind on high alert the whole time, trying to be as efficient as possible, so it’s not the best antidote for the Hungry! Hungry! Go go go! type thinking.

I think it all comes down to the human desire not to miss out on anything. Why stand still and soak in the moment when there are billions of other articles, videos, songs, blogs, etc. beckoning!

Interesting in the movie I am Legend that when the clamoring media and busy-ness of life was silenced by the tragedy – it was then that people could hear the voice of God – the still small voice – I need that more

But sometimes I experience the exact inverse of this. I spend too much time reading in details some articles or stuff that I really should skip.

For example I am a very busy web developper… yet I get those “phases” when I spend days reading about game design or philosophical stuff (while having deadlines nearby) and those info are totally useless to me in real life.

So in the end I scan things I really need (like technical information, because I am in a hurry to get things done), and I spend too much time mastering things that are useless to me in practice. That’s quite a big problem now that I think of it…

WOW!! I can’t believe someone could even say that and mean it.

It’s not the internet that is making us have a lower attention span, it’s the way we use it.
The way we constantly look for entertainment, etc and if we don’t find it in the first 5 websites, we stop our search and go onto something else.

It’s really a problem for the youngest generation, but the Internet is a WEALTH OF KNOWLEDGE!! Every child who has access to the Internet can become a certified genius in their lifetime, but the problem, again, is we use the Internet for entertainment.

I think that instead of designing services that help us create more and more micro content, we should be trying to create and promote services that help us to filter the best of the more intelligent, thoughtful fare.

I mean really, the only reason behind all this is to earn more profits. The real question arrives, how to make these services profitable. That’s the challenging task. Don’t you think ?

I’m 40 now and I’m learning more than I ever have at any point in my life including college. A large part of that is due to the Internets. Yes, I read one paragraph and move on. Yes, I skim. This allows me to go through more stuff. When I find something that looks interesting, I read it.

It is hard to hold my attention, not because my attention span is short but because there’s so much out there that’s just an unimaginative rehash of something else I’ve already read. I don’t want to read the same thing over and over from many different perspectives, I want new perspectives… and if you skipped this comment I don’t blame you b/c it was just a “me too” comment from what gnarf posted.

I do not completely agree with the article. IMHO the research is drawing conclusions out of the wrong data.

When we search the web for a particular piece of information or article we skim through a lot of pages in search of the right information. This does not mean that the attention span of the end user is short; the user simply hasn’t found yet the info he was looking for.

I wonder about the validity of a lot of research in this field. Having been a researcher myself in the past, I can tell that data interpretation is particularly difficult and often you come up with conclusions that have nothing to do with reality.

Raja Sekharan