Here's an interesting article on the consequences of reading news online. Dvorak claims that by the increased ability to customise once consumption of information, individuals will loose the serendipidity of discovering information outside their immediate interest and the society as a whole will lose one of its sources of internal cohesion. This, of course, could have significant consequences for many of the hyper-text and personalisation efforts in education.

I suspect that other mechanisms will emerge to promote social cohesion and the dissemination of information. The broadsheet and 9 o'clock news approach to a general sense of access to a pool shared knowledge is, after all, a very recent phenomenon. But that does not mean that we should not take this into account.

Losing Perspective - Columns by PC Magazine By perspective, I mean generalized or common knowledge. When you pick up The New York Times and look at the front page, you get a general perspective on world events. As you page through the newspaper, you see all sorts of interesting articles that you might not have read if you were merely surfing the Net for news.

Over time, this sort of happenstance approach to information gives a reader perspective on things. You have a sense as to what the economy is doing. You know if some international disaster has occurred. You are more tuned in.

This is going away.