Steven Berlin Johnson answers Nick Carr’s supposition that the distracting links and brevity of modern reading are undermining the deep and immersive focus that is the defining benefit of the book:

The problem with Mr. Carr’s model is its unquestioned reverence for the slow contemplation of deep reading. For society to advance as it has since Gutenberg, he argues, we need the quiet, solitary space of the book. Yet many great ideas that have advanced culture over the past centuries have emerged from a more connective space, in the collision of different worldviews and sensibilities, different metaphors and fields of expertise. (Gutenberg himself borrowed his printing press from the screw presses of Rhineland vintners, as Mr. Carr notes.)

It’s no accident that most of the great scientific and technological innovation over the last millennium has taken place in crowded, distracting urban centers. The printed page itself encouraged those manifold connections, by allowing ideas to be stored and shared and circulated more efficiently. One can make the case that the Enlightenment depended more on the exchange of ideas than it did on solitary, deep-focus reading. […]

We are reading more text, writing far more often, than we were in the heyday of television. And the speed with which we can follow the trail of an idea, or discover new perspectives on a problem, has increased by several orders of magnitude. We are marginally less focused, and exponentially more connected. That’s a bargain all of us should be happy to make.

Indeed, while Carr’s argument comes gussied up in nascent twenty-first century neuroscience, it feels like an echo of the anti-television mindset of late twentieth century thinking. Today’s tweeting hordes are just dumbed-down couch potatoes.

To the extent that Carr gets it right, could he be overstating, or ignoring, the breadth of deep thought in humankind? Most of those nonfiction bestsellers (Carr’s is #27 this week) find their way from coffee table to bedside table to bookshelf unread. It is likely that we, all of us, are reading more words today even if huge numbers of them come in 140 character bursts on smartphone screens.

What we lack in depth may be made up in the breadth of our engagement. The move from LPs to CDs to MP3s saw the absolute fidelity of audio fall. But the relative quality of the audio most people enjoy listening to has risen. It could be that there are fewer deep thinking individuals within the broad breadth of humankind. And the level of engagement and depth of knowledge that most of us have around issues that matter is rising.

Or…

What if the distribution of different ways of thinking and learning remains relatively constant over time, while that which is rewarded changes? An inborn ability to memorize and retain information was a big benefit in the technological environment of the twentieth century. It could be a hindrance in the twenty-first, where an agile mind with the ability to quickly access and cross-reference — once understood, experienced, and described as “distracted” — is rewarded.

Naturally, those who benefited in that past would see that future as problematic. And, reasonably, warn against it. While believers in evolution could see natural selection getting us through the shift. In any event, it’s not something I will fret about. But, then, I once believed in multitasking in a way I no longer do. And I still haven’t read the book.

RELATED: On his blog Johnson encourages all of us to read Carr’s book. He also adds some comments well worth reading to his NYTimes’ piece. I’ll be reading Johnson’s book, Where Good Ideas Come From, (or placing it on my bookshelf next to Carr’s) when it comes out in the fall. I also recommend to TMV readers Carr’s blog, Rough Type.

You can find me @jwindish, at my Public Notebook, or email me at joe-AT-joewindish-DOT-com.