Matthew Yglesias » Curmudgeons Should Keep Their Sites on Television
"At any rate, if you want to be curmudgeonly about anything, I think television is still the right thing to be curmudgeonly about—just as it was fifty years ago. TV, unfortunately, is pretty awesome. And modern developments like high-definition, 300 channel digital cable, Tivo, and Netflix-on-demand make it all the more awesome. But it’s really not very informative at all."
Matt Yglesias on Kevin Drum's piece on how the the internet, without books, makes you dumber. (http://bit.ly/Kefvq). I'm with Yglesias on this.
As soon as I read Drum's statement, "I'm generally a scourge of cranky elders who spend a lot of time kvetching about how ill educated kids are today compared to the golden age they used to live in. " I knew we were in for a cranky elder speech.
I love books -- and even bought three today in a "real" bookstore (thanks Elliot Bay Book Company) and frankly don't disagree that to deeply understand many topics in the world, books are still the only way to get this knowledge. But, I see no evidence that people are dumber in the five years or so in which reading on the internet is actually significant versus some rosy past where everyone was a genius reading books by candlelight.
And, if you are going to say "I'd love to be wrong about this. But I'm not." could you a least provide one shred of evidence, or even an anecdote, to support the contention?
Comments [0]
Book title of the day: "The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday"
The best book title I have heard in a while. It's by Neil MacFarquhar. And seems pretty interesting. Heard him on KUOW ( @sscher show) -- listen here: http://www.kuow.org/mp3high/m3u/WeekdayA/WeekdayA20090505.m3u
I didn't think he was a very good radio speaker - but some interesting comments and will likely add to my ever-growing Kindle backlog... I suspect he's better in print. (Sorry, Neil...)
http://www.amazon.com/Relations-Department-Hizbollah-Wishes-Birthday/dp/1586486357
Comments [0]
Comments [0]