I think you have a point. I went to college when people went to the library to do research, and there were relatively few of us who did that in any given evening. For the majority of the population, it was simply beyond reach. So the value of research was high, and the ability to focus on one subject almost priceless. Today, research is something almost everyone in any kind of academic or commercial discipline does daily. That's the real contribution the "internet" has made, it added a research appliance to our everyday life. It gave the population a "clock" for research,
and most of the population is research literate. Now we can just live up to the potential
if we make most published literature free and searchable on the web. Maybe we can tighten people's ethical framework a little, so this new ability makes everyone a little more honest and credible. I think Mr. Carr may be mourning the loss of status of the hardworking researcher.So I think any degradation in attention span, or quality of concentration can be controlled on a personal level. Television and computer game consoles didn't involuntarily incapacitate me, as a matter of fact, I quickly tired of the content available in favor of research. And increasing the percentage of people doing research outweighs any loss of concentration suffered. Most of the people suffering weren't involved in scholarly work of any kind before web research became possible.   See 1 other reply