Ah, here we go again. In an article written by Motoko Rich in today’s New York Times, there’s yet another summary of what, and how, the nation’s young people are reading, and the surrounding debate about what it all means for the future of reading.

Once more: Young people no longer read books for fun. The little reading they do, outside of school, takes place on the Internet. And because kids are spending more time than ever on the Internet, they rarely get to read a sustained narrative. Instead, they read as if they are leapfrogs, jumping willy-nilly from Web site to Web site. Since they no longer read books — especially long ones — they never learn the skills we oldsters developed of crawling along in turtle-like fashion, following a sustained and steady narrative determined by an unseen author. Put this information together with what are at best flat-line reading scores, many experts say, and we see a clear relation of (bad) cause and (bad) effect.

There are plenty of defenders of Web reading, however, who vigorously argue that Web reading at least gets young people to read. (The implication is that this is a promising thing for both the future of education and democracy itself.) Moreover, defenders of Web reading argue, reading on the Web not only prepares students for the real 21st-century world, it also more genuinely reflects how we act in that world. To the Web reading advocates, reading on the Internet is as important a skill as traditional book reading. Some experts even advocate testing Internet skills the way we test traditional reading and math skills.

Traditional reading proponents argue back that reading books offers more time for reflection on, and absorption of, deep ideas, provides access to great minds from previous centuries and other cultures, and establishes a common cultural ground for everyone. Some suspect that Webophilia will irrevocably alter the human brain—a malleable organ that readily develops new synaptic connections according to the challenges it confronts—to the point where human beings will end up losing the ability to comprehend straight-line narratives.

The literacy debate has now reached the saturation point. It’s repeatedly grinding the same information into the same dusty, either/or conclusions: Read books and be smart or read on the Internet and be dumb. Yet the thrust of history is irreversible. Like it or not, most people will turn more and more in2 (like that?) nothing but Web readers.

The reading question, therefore, has now turned political. A new elite — a new oligarchy, if you will — consisting of people who are equal masters of both Web and book reading will emerge.

The people who can move fluidly from Facebook, realpolitics.com and Twitter to War and Peace and The Origin of Species may end up being a small group, but they’ll be an elite and powerful group that will present a new and daunting challenge to everybody else.

(Image from Photobucket.com)