The assumption that "more" and "faster" are necessarily better requires vigorous questioning, especially since this assumption already increasingly influences everything in American society, including how we eat and how we learn, with doubtful benefits. For example, will the accelerated rate of change already experienced by our children have consequences that radically affect the quality of attention that can transform a word into a thought and a thought into a world of unimagined possibility?
Will this next generation's capacity to find insights, pleasure, pain, and wisdom in oral and written language be dramatically altered? Will their relationship to language be fundamentally changed? Will the present generation become so accustomed to immediate access to on-screen information that the range of attentional, inferential, and reflective capacities in the present reading brain will become less developed? And what of future generations? Are Socrates' concerns about unguided access to information more warranted today than they were in ancient Greece?
No comments:
Post a Comment