I just finshed skimreading (most of) an article about how the Web is changing the way the we read - and the way that we think. There was a tidbit about language in there that I found interesting (good thing I didn't skim past it!).

Reading... is not an instinctive skill for human beings. It’s not etched into our genes the way speech is. We have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic characters we see into the language we understand. And the media or other technologies we use in learning and practicing the craft of reading play an important part in shaping the neural circuits inside our brains. Experiments demonstrate that readers of ideograms, such as the Chinese, develop a mental circuitry for reading that is very different from the circuitry found in those of us whose written language employs an alphabet. The variations extend across many regions of the brain, including those that govern such essential cognitive functions as memory and the interpretation of visual and auditory stimuli. We can expect as well that the circuits woven by our use of the Net will be different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed works.

Part of the reason I want to learn to read Mandarin Chinese is to expand my mind, to enhance my ability to think and process visual input in the form of characters. This fascinates me, and drives me to use sites like nciku to amass large amounts of Chinese vocabulary (well, that's a ways off yet). I want to activate those other areas of the brain that will develop as I learn to interpret Chinese characters.

In fact, aside from being able to relate with more people all over the world, that is what has most interested me about learning languages in general: new ways of thinking about the same old sh!t. But are we really thinking more and more as we delve into technology, search engines, the Worldwide Web, et al? Or are we developing into mere processors of information that have lost the ability to think and concentrate profoundly on a topic for extended periods?

I certainly feel the restlessness bubble up inside of me when faced with a Web page full of text, and chances are I won't read it all, just find what I wanted and keep going. Good or bad - who knows? But watching myself change with the amazing flux of information available to me has caused me to revert back to the "old school" in several ways, most notably forcing (literally) myself to concentrate on learning a language non-sporadically - a whole hour devoted to one language! It has also caused me to back away from information overload... cancel loads of email subscriptions and unsubscribe from a bucketload of RSS feeds in an effort to be (over-)exposed to only the most pertinent, interesting content.

Now I feel my concentration waning as I write this lengthy entry! Better check out before you do.