Analysts predict that the knowledge economy of the near future will require people to be both computer literate and print literate. However, some of the reading and thinking habits of current college students suggest that electronic media such as web browsers may be limiting the new generation's ability to absorb and process what they read. Their approach resembles the actions of web browsers in several respects, especially its lack of discrimination and its treatment of sets of words as decontextualized images exclusive of any ideas behind them. One cause may be that, as media theorists McLuhan and Postman have pointed out, technological advances in the way we package information, including the printing press, television, and now computers, have influenced the way people use their minds to take in, structure and store information. There are a number of disturbing implications from this trend. According to information processing, psycholinguistic and brain theories, this treatment of complex syntactic structures as meaningless image patterns may inhibit brain development and lead to a sub-class that, while technically competent, cannot cope with the vast amounts of information generated by the electronic media. (Contains 1 figure.)