Reading in the digital age

I've been thinking lately about how the internet is changing the way we read, think and behave.  At a  recent meeting of the Hamilton Literary Society, I read my poem (below) and asked members if we were losing the plot, as reading changes to accommodate digital technology.

Playwright R Foreman, Crikey writer G.Noble, as well as commentators J.Achenburg and B.Macintyre have all explored this issue recently and suggested that information overload creates pancake people (people spread wide and thin as they try to connect to vast amounts of data) or magpie readers (gathering bright buttons of information, before hopping on to some shiny new thing) and may even be threatening the very concept of culture itself.

Possible themes for the next meeting of our informal discussion group, perhaps.

When word was king  (how long ago was that?)

the news was in the paper to be read

in depth, at leisure, every word a thread

 to lives unknown and worlds  unseen.

Now image rules the world and slick and pat

the news is in full colour to be viewed

and words are only captions sparsely glued

on all and sundry’s giant plasma screen.

While in the logged-on world that followed that

a web of screens entices us each day 

to phone, to view, to scan and surf away

but not to question what our icons mean.

Almost, but not quite

2010 is shaping up as the year of the drawn contest.  First the Tasmanian state election produced a hung parliament, then the British election did likewise, followed by the Australian election resulting in a hung parliament (for the first time since the Second World War) and now the Aussie Rules Football Grand Final has ended in a draw (for the first time since 1977).  Something in the air?