The deep-reading brain excels at making connections among analogical, inferential, and empathetic modes of reasoning, and knows how to associate them all with accumulated background knowledge. That constellation of sources and connections is what enables not just strategic thinking, but original thinking more broadly. So could it be that the failures of the American political class to fashion useful solutions to public- and foreign-policy challenges turn not just on polarization and hyper-partisanship, but also on the strong possibility that many of these non-deep readers are no longer able to think below the surface tension of a tweet?
If the printing press helped produce the Enlightenment, then perhaps the iPhone is producing the Endarkenment.
Bandwidth limit of the public office.
The House, each member is dealing with constituents with the same process, since 1950, and it is fixed.
When the system oveloads it is predictable. The number I use is the number of people who are willing to die to keep the economy moving, 60,000. The number of death soldiers from Vietnam, 55,000. The number of corona cases. 50,000. The number of auto deaths before safety features, 50,000.
That represents about 100 severe complaints per House member and overloads the system. The House member calls for a restructure, cannot handle it.
That may also explain the resurgence of socialism’s popularity. People must be able to go beyond what Thomas Sowell calls stage one thinking to understand the problems with minimum wage laws and the like.
Yup, this -> “If the printing press helped produce the Enlightenment, then perhaps the iPhone is producing the Endarkenment.”
For me, the essential difference is limited vs limitless. A book requires one to focus on it alone. The iPhone allows for immediate refocus. The result isn’t healthy, it’s anxiety causing.
It’s almost as if we have gone back to the Dark Ages where our collective head is on a swivel trying to be alert for danger. The difference between then and now is now the need to be perpetually alert (and thus, live at the level of the superficial) is self-inflicted.
Perhaps it’s a function of generations. I’m older and prefer a book. Perhaps as this iPhone generation gets older it will learn to go deeper. With age wisdom? Maybe we will have to wait and see as this generation is the first with the new mode (similar to back then for that first generation with a book).
Frederick the Great’ s Prussia, where mandatory mass schooling was decreed prior to 1776, was most likely more mass literate than Britain’ north American colonies even despite the large numbers of immigrants from the birthplace of mass public schooling, Scotland, because the Scott’s were disproportionately high Landers and less literate on average than the highly literate low landers. After all, the USA adopted the Prussian education model and the USA. education system remains largely of Prussian design.
Ironically, the USA schools are churning out illiterates and individuals incapable of deep reading, not because of technology, but because the teaching guild has been subverted to an indoctrination guild. The great professor Jerry Ellis’ s magisterial The Breakdown of Higher Education provides a thorough survey of the evidence. College education does not improve reading or comprehension ability and the lower and middle schools provide it minimally.
Don’t blame technology. During this great lockdown I have spoken with several young people. One, recent graduate waiting for his fishing boat to put to sea has finished reading The Master and His Emissary having been intrigued by an Econtalk episode. Another young lady finished Middlemarch and has become a George Eliot enthusiast. Far from being the impediment to learning most are calling the lockdown, for many youngsters, the lockdown is a fantastic opportunity to engage in real learning. I predict that the lockdown will improve educational outcomes and a produce a bright New generation of independent thinkers.
“[T]he USA schools are churning out illiterates and individuals incapable of deep reading” because reading isn’t that easy for lots of people and deep reading is hard for just about everyone. Most teachers would love it if their students could read easily and think deeply, as long as they thought in accepted ways.
And think about it. Is Paul Krugman illiterate? Unable to think deeply? Hillary Clinton? Bill Clinton? A powerful intellect and reading and thinking skills often go hand in hand with a closed mind and a rigid ideology.
I’m not sure about this. Before the internet we had commercial television.
There might have been a few good shows, but on the other hand the sound bite was alive and well even then, except controlled by those who controlled the major networks.
Yes Twitter is only Twitter, yet anyone has access.
Now I can read the ASK blog,
Is socialism on the rise in the US? If it is, I think it is because the leadership class has not delivered the goods to the employee class. High unemployment was embraced in order to fight inflation, open borders were the norm, and subsidized goods from Europe and China were imported freely. No one wanted to tackle property zoning, which has resulted in exploding house prices on the coasts and even in such cities as Austin.
Could it be that the statement and question are wrong? The past is full of terrible public and foreign policy responses.