5 ms·

This is the start of modern illiteracy.

anonzzzies 2y ago
Start... We are already very far advanced as far as I can see. You wouldn't know if you hang with university students; they seem, at least the ones I employ/talk to, far more knowledgeable than the young me was, however, when I talk to other young people, they don't want to and are not very good at processing textual information. They need to have it spoken and in a very information sparse format. It's somewhat depressing, so I hope it's just the people I meet and what I read online, but I don't think so.
- slumberlust 2y ago
  Name a generation that didn't think the youth 'lost it.'
  - anonzzzies 2y ago
    Yep, like I said; I hope it's just me. That's fine too. It's just actively annoying that people just refuse to read stuff. It's very wasteful timewise for me.
schmidtleonard 2y ago
This is adblock for text.
ryao 2y ago
Such sentiments have been expressed so many times that I have lost track of all of the times variations on them have been expressed. I think it started with Socrates who claimed the written word would damage human recall. When nobody believed him and he became popular because of the written word, people inverted “literacy is bad” into “literacy is good”. In more recent times, I believe radio and TV were said to be the start of modern illiteracy. By the way, for what it is worth, only 2% of the population can read at a college level. It had been that way for so long that I heard that the category was merged into the high school level several years ago to make the literacy rate in the top bracket 4% instead of the prior 2%. i.e. “modern illiteracy” started a long time ago if we go by numbers.
- dasil003 2y ago
  Maybe Socrates was correct? I certainly think Google has damaged my memory, or maybe just age, hard to say.
  - ryao 2y ago
    Who knows? The guy was not a really good teacher. His student Plato ignored the meaning of what he said about learning to write a book on it. A major point of the book was that reading the book was pointless because it was a form of sophism. Before I am downvoted into oblivion, the above text is half joking and half serious. Socrates in Plato’s Republic really does make the case that formal training via methods intended to teach is pointless by comparing education to training horses. I made that point in my college philosophy class hoping the professor would skip it on the basis that it was a bad book (my thoughts on a book that suggested you could not learn its material by being lead to it - see the cave analogy). The professor then stopped the entire class to try to make sure everyone understood the point and then continued as if the material was not criticizing him.
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    Probably so. Socrates witnessed the end of the Athenian Golden Age during his lifetime.
- FrustratedMonky 2y ago
  Yes. People forget that Charles Dickens was considered trash, pulp, un-intellectual. That people were reading such trash would lead to the downfall of civilization. Basically what everyone says today about whatever latest media type.
  - 9283409232 2y ago
    Literacy rates have fallen in the past 20 years and something tells me that Dickens is not responsible.
    - FrustratedMonky 2y ago
senectus1 2y ago
I mean.. yeah, but.. I just fed this into grok and it did a fair job of summarising it (I know because I've done a fair bit of reading on the zizian nutters.)
balamatom 2y ago
No, just a way to say "tl;dr" which also somehow manages to be offensively classist.

Start... We are already very far advanced as far as I can see. You wouldn't know if you hang with university students; they seem, at least the ones I employ/talk to, far more knowledgeable than the young me was, however, when I talk to other young people, they don't want to and are not very good at processing textual information. They need to have it spoken and in a very information sparse format. It's somewhat depressing, so I hope it's just the people I meet and what I read online, but I don't think so.

slumberlust 2y ago
Name a generation that didn't think the youth 'lost it.'
- anonzzzies 2y ago
  Yep, like I said; I hope it's just me. That's fine too. It's just actively annoying that people just refuse to read stuff. It's very wasteful timewise for me.

schmidtleonard 2y ago

This is adblock for text.

ryao 2y ago

Such sentiments have been expressed so many times that I have lost track of all of the times variations on them have been expressed. I think it started with Socrates who claimed the written word would damage human recall. When nobody believed him and he became popular because of the written word, people inverted “literacy is bad” into “literacy is good”. In more recent times, I believe radio and TV were said to be the start of modern illiteracy. By the way, for what it is worth, only 2% of the population can read at a college level. It had been that way for so long that I heard that the category was merged into the high school level several years ago to make the literacy rate in the top bracket 4% instead of the prior 2%. i.e. “modern illiteracy” started a long time ago if we go by numbers.

dasil003 2y ago
Maybe Socrates was correct? I certainly think Google has damaged my memory, or maybe just age, hard to say.
- ryao 2y ago
  Who knows? The guy was not a really good teacher. His student Plato ignored the meaning of what he said about learning to write a book on it. A major point of the book was that reading the book was pointless because it was a form of sophism. Before I am downvoted into oblivion, the above text is half joking and half serious. Socrates in Plato’s Republic really does make the case that formal training via methods intended to teach is pointless by comparing education to training horses. I made that point in my college philosophy class hoping the professor would skip it on the basis that it was a bad book (my thoughts on a book that suggested you could not learn its material by being lead to it - see the cave analogy). The professor then stopped the entire class to try to make sure everyone understood the point and then continued as if the material was not criticizing him.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  Probably so. Socrates witnessed the end of the Athenian Golden Age during his lifetime.
FrustratedMonky 2y ago
Yes. People forget that Charles Dickens was considered trash, pulp, un-intellectual. That people were reading such trash would lead to the downfall of civilization. Basically what everyone says today about whatever latest media type.
- 9283409232 2y ago
  Literacy rates have fallen in the past 20 years and something tells me that Dickens is not responsible.
  - FrustratedMonky 2y ago

senectus1 2y ago

I mean.. yeah, but.. I just fed this into grok and it did a fair job of summarising it (I know because I've done a fair bit of reading on the zizian nutters.)

balamatom 2y ago

No, just a way to say "tl;dr" which also somehow manages to be offensively classist.