“We seem to cultivate either the skill of deep reading or the skill of scanning”

As we cultivate the skill of scanning screens, many of us find it more difficult to read a book word by word and line by line. We seem to cultivate either the skill of deep reading or the skill of scanning … but it is difficult to maintain both skills.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt publicly worried about the effect this kind of reading—and about the impact of the Internet as a whole: "I worry that the level of interrupt, the sort of over-whelming rapidity of information—and especially of stressful information—is in fact affecting cognition. It is in fact affecting deeper thinking."

A good portion of the Christian life requires the ability to concentrate and focus on ideas over long periods of time. Spiritual depth requires the ability to pray for more than a few minutes, to read and memorize Scripture—not to search for it online, and to love God with our hearts and our minds. This means that we must be careful to cultivate and retain the skill of deeply reading and deeply contemplating the things of God, something the Internet and digital technologies do not seem to foster.

—John Dyer in From the Garden to the City: the Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology (Kregel, 2011)