Uma nova forma de iliteracia?

A linguagem foi abalada pelas novas tecnologias e esse facto é visível nas expressões linguísticas utilizadas pelos mais jovens, mas será que a revolução ficou só por aí? Este artigo de opinião reflecte sobre o papel da Internet, dos seus motores de busca e das bibliotecas on-line na nossa leitura e, eventualmente, também escrita.

O artigo
Internet aliterates
By Naomi S. BaronSunday, December 4, 2005

A few years back, I asked my undergraduates to read Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone." The class was discussing the effects of the Internet on social interaction. Putnam's carefully documented analysis of the breakdown of Americans' connections to one another offered a good frame of reference.
The students balked.
Was I aware that the book was 541 pages long? Didn't I know Putnam had written a "precis" of his argument a couple of years earlier, which they easily found on the Web? Why did they have to slog through so many examples of the same point?
One memorable freshman sagely informed me that people shouldn't be reading entire volumes these days anyway. He had learned from a high school teacher that book authors (presumably fiction excepted) pad their core ideas to make money and that anything worth writing could be expressed in an article of 20 or 30 pages, tops.