Carl reminds us of a fascinating article on the Atlantic website that got lost in the end of the semester paper shuffle. I see the effect in my students and I see it in myself. The thing I’m concerned about is how much Carl knows about Nietzsche. Should we be looking for a distinctive handle-bar mustache anytime soon?
Sounds similar to Postman’s amusing ourselves to death and the oxymoronic nature of the statement; educational tv. It seemed that everybody agreed that the internet, from a cognitive development perspective, was to be preferred to passive t.v. watching. English teachers and grammarians, I know, hate what texting and e-mail have done to their students. I’m skeptical of his skepticism, however, the “efficiency” remarks are dead-on. Take any business writing course, and all you hear is; “too wordy”, “write less”, “if it can’t be distilled to a paragraph, you don’t understand your concept sufficiently.” “These are busy people, if it’s more than two paragraphs they won’t read it.”
Heh… so that’s what’s been happening to me!
Interesting article… although I only read the first bit of it. It was a little long.