It's a worrisome trend about the popularity of skimming and scanning among readers, says an article in People's Daily. Excerpts:

The cyber-age has changed people's reading habits. On one hand, thanks to the massive amount of information on the Internet, people can take advantage of their free time with leisure and convenience. But on the other hand, one cannot think coherently and deeply about the quantity of online information and hot topics as one moves from one to another in an instant.

So as reading has become fragmented, some even joke that the Internet has turned intellectuals into "knowers".

Without doubt, skimming and scanning are products of the Internet age, which links all kinds of information by timing rather than logical relevance. To coin a metaphor, it feels like surfing on the surface of a knowledge sea, but never diving in.

Take the micro blog as an example. A webpage can contain several messages written by micro-bloggers. One message has 140 Chinese characters or less. With irrelevant messages being updated quickly, one cannot hold his or her concentration.

For now, publishers should not cater to such reading habits. To learn from a foreign experience, we see that a popular work such as The Social Animal shows that combining the latest scientific research on neurology and cognitive psychology with amusing narrating can become a best-seller.

Profound knowledge deserves more efforts and serious attitude.