I was with you right up to the fifth paragraph, but then I lost your point and started to skim.
Can you summarise it in a couple of senteces?
/sarcasm
OK, for real... I agree that many people's reading habit have changed because of the net, but I've learned the value of sumarising, I've learned the ability to trim the fat - having been taught at university to write UP to a word count, rather than DOWN to a word count as we do online.