[chrisacree]

I agree that the biggest difference is that the web simply has people spending more time reading skim-worthy content. News/blog articles, forums, and comment threads make up a significant part of online reading and are naturally much more skim-able than most books. That's not a bad thing.

The important question is whether, as our deeper reading also goes digital, our habits of skimming while online will extend to them or not. Habits can be hard to break.