Subject:
|
Re: Reading in steep decline?
|
Newsgroups:
|
lugnet.off-topic.debate
|
Date:
|
Thu, 8 Jul 2004 18:20:38 GMT
|
Viewed:
|
731 times
|
| |
|
|
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Christopher L. Weeks wrote:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek wrote:
>
> > Thoughts?
>
> I'm not particularly troubled. I hope to see the day when computers have fairly
> direct interfaces with meat. If/when that comes around, people won't read at
> all, really. Will that be a tragedy?
I expect that reading will always (well, for a good long while yet) be a needed
skill, because at some level it will be necessary simply to read the label,
directions, caption, or whatever on something that doesn't support the
direct-meat interface. But I grant that the creation of such an interface will
greatly reduce the need for reading as a general source of information exchange.
For that matter, I expect that the cost will be sufficiently prohibitive for
long enough that reading will still be a needed skill for at least the next
century or so.
> I think this is just a sign of progress.
Yeah, I can accept that. I can't exactly carve or read hieroglyphics, but my
life doesn't seem to have suffered overmuch as a result.
> On the other hand, while reading might be being given up as a less efficient
> means of taking in information, I wonder if the process of reading a great deal
> shapes certain cognitive abilities. If so, what skill-set might we be losing?
> And does it matter? But that's just fairly wild speculation.
There's a well-known notion that the rise of printing led to a decline in human
memory. Often we hear that people could recite thousand-line epics after a
single hearing, and that this amazing skill vanished with the advent of
text-based information storage.
Bollocks (if I may borrow an idiom from across the pond)!
I'd love to see the objective analysis documenting such widespread and
phenomenal memory without resorting to anecdotes or eyewitness accounts. I
simply don't buy it.
Reading seems almost certain to shape cognitive development in much the same way
that language itself changes the development of the brain. I expect that the
loss of reading as a skill or exercise will indeed result in a change in the way
the brain develops and/or functions. Perhaps we'll lose one skill, but we'll
likely gain others in trade.
Dave!
|
|
Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Reading in steep decline?
|
| (...) The way I heard it was, around 1450 or so, a learned scientist did a study on the phenomenon, which supported the claim, but since he was not really happy with the results, his method of "publishing" was to ask his son to memorise the whole (...) (20 years ago, 8-Jul-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
|
Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Reading in steep decline?
|
| (...) I'm not particularly troubled. I hope to see the day when computers have fairly direct interfaces with meat. If/when that comes around, people won't read at all, really. Will that be a tragedy? I think this is just a sign of progress. On the (...) (20 years ago, 8-Jul-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
|
12 Messages in This Thread:
   
- Entire Thread on One Page:
- Nested:
All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:
All | Brief | Compact
This Message and its Replies on One Page:
- Nested:
All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:
All | Brief | Compact
|
|
|
|
