I've actually been reading more books since I started using the Web. There is no doubt in my mind that reading web content engages different kinds of reading skills and requires different kinds of reading discipline. Because so much information is hyper-linked in the web it is easy to get off the main thread of a subject and find yourself reading about a topic that had very little to do with the topic of origin. And that's where the special discipline comes into play, keeping the mind on track and knowing how deep you need to pursue links that will help you more completely grasp the original topic. In some printed non-fiction texts, footnotes allow you a similar ability to do this, though these are more often citations than clarifications. We don't need as much discipline to keep ourselves to the book, because the book itself doesn't offer the same convenient ability to hyperlink to the text referenced in the footnote that a web page does. In the world of books, we are forced to enrich our understanding of our text by following up with other books.

This does mean that it can be much easier to do research on the web, because of the immediacy of hyperlinks. However unless you are a careful reader, you may not actually do research. Casual reading of web content without the discipline amounts to just surfing. But surfing is not always bad, you might surf for a while and then find yourself doing research when you encounter a topic compelling enough to read more carefully.