Interesting Post Harold. First time "responder" And coincidentally I just ordered an Amazon Kindle --- Surely Mr. Haskins is a candidate for a Kindle!!!

I read with interest your assertion that you have a foot in both camps. While I too am not immune to the seductive siren call of the net and it's glittering information trails, I find myself reading books and rejecting the net where possible If only to defy the "Is Google Making us Stupid?" notion raised by Nick Carr earlier this summer.

Here is my larger question. If indeed we move to this information garden and we are all bees flitting from one pollen cup to another, who will do the serious thinking in society? Who will deliver the next Polio Vaccine, The Cure for Alzheimer's. Who will write the next great novel? Or conceive of new ideas?

Does not serious disciplined intellectual pursuit need a less distracting environment than the net? Don't true scientists have to sit and actually read the heavy subject matter of their chosen field to advance? Did my neighbor with a Phd from MIT in Aerospace Engineering (a real live "Rocket Scientist") get his advanced degree while using Facebook?

HELP me get my head just partially around this!!! Lest I go off the Deep end and buy Maggie Jackson's new book, "Distracted: The erosion of attention and the coming dark age"!!!!

Cheers,
mike whatley
altadena, ca