My concerns: I thought perhaps I might have a brain tumor, or I’m experiencing the onset of adult ADD or early dementia. Or my life has so many varied, disparate elements that my brain is failing to keep up. Or just too much stress and not enough sleep is causing me to lose IQ points.

My symptoms: I can’t remember, with ease, the big words, the $2 words. And I have difficulty reading books or even longer articles these days because my mind wanders and I’m easily distracted, and I lose my train of thought in tangents.

The diagnosis: My brain is being altered by the Internet. I read an article a few weeks ago by James Fallows on theAtlantic.com, titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” I was excited to read about academic and literary types reporting similar symptoms. Fallows wrote:

And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

I have been re-reading some Jane Austen novels recently, and find it nearly impossible to stick to it for very long. It was frequently sheer will-power to get through a chapter at a time. My inner conversation, as I’m reading, goes something like this: “Hmm…Rosings Park. I wonder what the film location was for the 2005 version…I’ll look that up now…no, keep reading……I did like Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy in that PBS version though…what is the actor’s name from the Joe Wright version–Matthew something? I’ll just look it up quickly on imdb.com…no, stay…do NOT look anything up……keep reading.” And so on. I even have difficulty making it through movies these days, too, for the same reason.

I was lucky to grow up in a family where we always had dinner together and talked about our days. Inevitably, a volume or two of the Encylopaedia Brittanica would end up at the table. It was part of the table clearing ritual: clear the dishes, wipe the table, and re-shelve the encylopedias. I already had the propensity toward this kind of behavior, and growing up in a family like mine cemented it. So I was prone to being an information addict.

Access to information is a great thing. I confess my addiction. But how much is lost when there is no longer a need for retention of information? And if the way we think and learn is so deeply affected by how we access and process information, who will do the deep thinking?

Me? I’m just a gleaner.