A few weeks ago Religion Dispatches pub­lished an arti­cle about medieval man­u­scripts and mul­ti­task­ing. The point is that for cen­turies our minds have ref­er­enced texts on mul­ti­ple lev­els; the inter­net did not inher­ently cre­ate this dis­trac­tion. There is also this gem from a David Brooks col­umn:

The Internet-versus-books debate is con­ducted on the sup­po­si­tion that the medium is the mes­sage. But some­times the medium is just the medium. What mat­ters is the way peo­ple think about them­selves while engaged in the two activities.