Lamenting the downfall of traditional reading and how people raised on the internet (yes, thank you, that’d be us) are more or less illiterate. There’s a whiff of self-righteousness under a thick smog of condescending superiority, topped off with the occasional note of fear for an ill-defined apocalypse.
Seriously, people, there are Luddites in every generation, and do you know what happens to them? They get left behind in the wake of history, and look stupid while doing so. This genre of social commentary (the something-is-changing-in-our-culture-and-I-do-not-like-it) has always struck me as particularly both smug and pointless. What, everyone’s going to change because you find our new habits irritating?*
That said, it’s pretty interesting to wonder how the internet is going to change literacy habits. But this author needs to grow up and learn to roll with the times.
*I’m aware of the general injunctions against rhetorical questions; but they’re really unparalleled rhetorical devices. Hence the name, I suppose.
