Camille Paglia offers some new reflections on familiar objections to the manner in which the new electronic media have altered the intellects, the imaginations, and the attention spans of the young:

Interest in and patience with long, complex books and poems have alarmingly diminished not only among college students but college faculty in the U.S. It is difficult to imagine American students today, even at elite universities, gathering impromptu at midnight for a passionate discussion of big, challenging literary works like Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazovóa scene I witnessed in a recreation room strewn with rock albums at my college dormitory in upstate New York in 1965. As a classroom teacher for over thirty years, I have become increasingly concerned about evidence of, if not cultural decline, then cultural dissipation since the 1960s, a decade that seemed to hold such heady promise of artistic and intellectual innovation. Young people today are flooded with disconnected images but lack a sympathetic instrument to analyze them as well as a historical frame of reference in which to situate them. I am reminded of an unnerving scene in Stanley Kubrick's epic film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, where an astronaut, his air hose cut by the master computer gone amok, spins helplessly off into space. The new generation, raised on TV and the personal computer but deprived of a solid primary education, has become unmoored from the mother ship of culture. Technology, like Kubrick's rogue computer, HAL, is the companionable servant turned ruthless master. The ironically self-referential or overtly politicized and jargon-ridden paradigms of higher education, far from helping the young to cope or develop, have worsened their vertigo and free fall. Today's students require not subversion of rationalist assumptionsóthe childhood legacy of intellectuals born in Europe between the two World Warsóbut the most basic introduction to structure and chronology. Without that, they are riding the tail of a comet in a media starscape of explosive but evanescent images.

The extraordinary technological aptitude of the young comes partly from their now-instinctive ability to absorb information from the flickering TV screen, which evolved into the glassy monitor of the omnipresent personal computer. Television is reality for them: nothing exists unless it can be filmed or until it is rehashed onscreen by talking heads. The computer, with its multiplying forums for spontaneous free expression from e-mail to listservs and blogs, has increased facility and fluency of language but degraded sensitivity to the individual word and reduced respect for organized argument, the process of deductive reasoning. The jump and jitter of U.S. commercial television have demonstrably reduced attention span in the young. The Web too, with its addictive unfurling of hypertext, encourages restless acceleration.

English teachers know her claims about our collective degraded relationship to language to be true. They see it in their students, who object to reading long things, who object to reading hard things, who never think to look up words or ideas they don't know, who struggle not only to perceive linguistic nuance but also to keep track of plot twists and character names, who cannot independently picture character and scene inside their heads, who cannot grasp the rhyme or reason of verse that is not free verse. English teachers also--if they are honest--see the decaying of attention in themselves. The compulsive scanning and clicking rhythms of reading on the web become their norm for reading generally; they find themselves becoming impatient skimmers where once they would have carefully read and absorbed each word. Likewise, the use of the "quick email check" to kill time and fill gaps in concentration both expresses and causes their own altered relationship to concentrated reading and dedicated study.

I don't watch TV anymore, and haven't done so regularly for years. During that time, I've become a heavy user of the internet. During that time, too, I've watched my own relationship to the disciplined work of attentive study change. There have been great benefits--writing Critical Mass, for example, has helped me find my way out of the torturous, excruciatingly labored writing process that I used to believe was an inevitable part of putting together readable prose. But there have also been bad habits--the scanning sort of nonlinear reading one does online, where the ease of linking allows one to cover a great deal of ground without going much into depth, can too readily become one's default readerly setting. What works fine for Crooked Timber or Instapundit just doesn't cut it with George Eliot or James Joyce.

Though Paglia makes some interesting passing comments about reading proper, her principal concern is with how young people today read images. Her point is startlingly elegant: while students today are masters at decoding images that move and change, they are utterly befuddled by images that don't behave this way. In other words, while students instinctively comprehend TV, film, the web, and a range of related contemporary forms, they are at an utter loss when it comes to things like paintings, images that are designed to be static, arrested, unchanging and forever still. This confusion, in turn, Paglia argues, augers poorly for the cognitive development of entire generations of people:

The relationship of eye movements to cognitive development has been studied since the 1890s, the groundwork for which was laid by investigation into physiological optics by Hermann von Helmholtz and Ernst Mach in the 1860s. Visual tracking and stability of gaze are major milestones in early infancy. The eyes are neurologically tied to the entire vestibular system: the conch-like inner ear facilitates hand-eye coordination and gives us direction and balance in the physical world. By processing depth cues, our eyes orient us in space and create and confirm our sense of individual agency. Those in whom eye movements and vestibular equilibrium are disrupted, I contend, cannot sense context and thus become passive to the world, which they do not see as an arena for action. Hence this perceptual problem may well have unwelcome political consequences.

Education must strengthen and discipline the process of visual attention. Today's young have a modest, flexible, chameleonlike ability to handle or deflect the overwhelming pressure of sensory stimuli, but perhaps at a cost to their sense of personal identity.

I fully agree that the attention spans of students -- and professors -- is declining primarily as a result of the internet.

But I'm skeptical of Paglia's attempt to link the advent of internet culture to television, primarily because television has been around for 50 years, and the vast majority of people who are writing or teaching today are therefore products of televisual culture. The decline in response to stationary visual art should by this reasoning have happened long ago (maybe even earlier, with the advent of film itself more than a century ago).

Secondly, I wonder about the reference to the moving vs. stationary eye. It's true that the eye has to be trained to absorb information from moving images, or from dense grids of data on the internet (one thinks of the intimidating format of Arts and Letters Daily). But doesn't the eye also move while reading from conventionally printed texts? Arguably, reading images in motion is simply another kind of training for our beleaguered eyes, a difference in style rather than form.

Paglia (and Erin O'Connor) are still right in arguing that attention spans are in trouble across the board, but I'm beginning to think that it's the internet rather than television that has done the most harm.

Thanks for the interesting post.

Since I've started using the net heavily my reading of paper books has decreased notably. I am now simply more comfortable reading online than I am reading paper books.

New information on the net is also "free" ($) and hyperlinked. If the font is too small, I can easily increase it. If I want to reference something in the text it's a google search away. If I want to send a quote or an article to a friend, it's easy. I don't have to worry about the web getting damaged, or carrying endless heavy boxes full of web pages the next time I move.

Digital text provides functional benefits which I now notice the lack of in print media.

That said, your point about depth is well-taken. I presume that within the next 5-10 years we will have display units that are comfortable for extended reading. Many (most?) full-depth books will be available in digital format. At that point, I'm not sure I see an advantage to paper books.

=darwin

I recently watched the movie "The Greatest Story Ever Told." While it is a good movie, anyone who has watched "The Matrix" would wonder "When are they going to get on with it?" Faster doesn't mean better.

Something is always lost when tradition is discarded. Unfortunately, I think that the past of contemplation and serious reading is simply over. The novel's tailspin into victim mongering in the past 30 years is evidence that the art form is played out and no longer vital. The way of looking at the world that the novel created has been exhausted. Especially, the good guy versus the bad guy stance. As the novel form exhausted, the victim posturing moved in to fill the vacuum.

I watched the Upright Citizens Brigade on TV over the weekend at the urging of friends who told me how "edgy" and daring it was. The show consisted of heavy handed skits, most of which were attempts to ridicule any sort of religious sensibility. Here was the problem. I could tell instantly that none of the actors, writers or other personnel involved in the show had ever had formal religious training or indoctrination. They were all kids raised by liberal permissive parents. I could tell this instantly, just by the lack of any real emotional connection to the material at hand. While the actors wanted to go for the jugular, they really had no idea what it was that they were parodying.

The disconnect that the young are experiencing is not solely one of attention span. My generation, the Boomers, succeeded all too well at destroying and eviscerating tradition. The result is emotional emptiness.

Can you please supply the missing word(s) in this sentence?

Say what you will about the historicity of consciousness, the new forms of synthesis and skill enabled by facility with new media, the sheer kinesis--not to mention thrill--of a world where thought shapes itself by and through the speeding shift of images and discursive frames.

Dr Jane Healy has written a book ("Endangered Minds")which touches on this matter. She argues that the experience of watching TV--independent of the content--is damaging to the mental development of children. She's particularly scathing about Sesame Street, suggesting that the heavy use of special effects--dancing letters, etc--means that when the kids read actual books, with letters that *don't* dance, they will be easily bored...

"Since I've started using the net heavily my reading of paper books has decreased notably."

That may be a candid confession, but I don't accept it as a universal trait. The net's great at certain things - quick research, getting news stories which the biased mainstream media suppress. It's dreadful in scads of other departments. And television, who needs it? It's 98 and 44/100 percent junk or political propaganda, with a very occasional informative item.

Just look at the success of Amazon, and see if plenty of printed works aren't briskly circulating. There may be a large crowd of the immediate-gratification sort, who can't tolerate an image that lasts over half a second. But there's also a large crowd of folks with enough curiosity to turn pages, and they aren't all 1940 models like myself.

One encouraging sign is...the success of blogs..these are mostly pure text, or pretty close to it. True, most bloggers write short entries of a paragraph or so, but considerable success has also been had by essayists like steven den beste (www.denbeste.nu) and bill whittle (www.ejectejecteject.com).

Is it possible we're all looking in the wrong place?

I wonder. Computer programmers and systems designers spend a great deal of time poring over screenfuls of code; if they're good, they're considering not only minute details but also how those details affect their entire sprawling work. Thoughtful programmers also recognize style and artistry--or lack thereof--in the way a particular application is crafted.

Likewise, the "geek culture" surrounding the IT field is packed with people who are willing to spend their weekends on lengthy, difficult, and (some would say) "boring" books, fiction and non-fiction alike. Whether it's Ayn Rand or the latest Douglas Hofstader treatise--to choose two stereotypical examples--today's computer geek is willing to pass the time reading dense material, even as English majors shudder at cracking open a copy of _Middlemarch_.

Likewise, what about lawyers? I am repeatedly amazed by their ability to plow through law codes, legal briefs, cases, etc., looking for patterns, flaws in logic, and so on.

These are just a couple of quick examples, of course, but I do wonder if the phenomenon Paglia describes doesn't have something more to do with the sorts of people who gravitate towards the humanities these days, or their perceptions of what an education in the humanities entails, because I think many of the skills and perspectives Paglia mourns may still be thriving--only outside of the humanities.

J.V.C. notes a very interesting phenomenon... that computer coders do engage in close reading, and the reading of dense, massive texts, as do lawyers. He's right.

Note that people make a living coding or practicing the law. The texts J.V.C. refers to are, likewise, practical texts.

Return to a previous topic on this site... a discussion of the future or non-future of teaching in the humanities. I thought many times of responding to this post, but did not. The humanities, in general, and English departments, in particular, seem to be adrift in delusions of grandeur. Just doing a necessary and worthwhile job doesn't seem to be enough. The greater ambitions of "saving the world" and "making a difference" seem tempting.

J.V.C. notes accurately that the fields of technology and law still require extensive and difficult reading and writing. These are practical fields. Somewhere along the trajectory of my life, I changed in this regard. I grew tired of the "great issues" that my educated in the humanities insisted I focus on. I became more interested every day in the practical, in information that really matters and affects people's lives.

J.V.C. might be on to something. The focus may have simply changed. Great novels don't often change societies these days. Computer programming does. Law does. Perhaps we are simply noting the obvious and acting accordingly.

There may be selection bias going on here. A large percentage of the students going into the humanities today *may* be those who simply lack the ability for sustained concentration which is required for fields like law or software development. I am sure that there are still many who go into the humanities out of a serious and genuine interest, but perhaps their numbers are being swamped by the flood of people like those described above.

OK, we spend a couple of generations steeping students on post-modernist though (there is no absolute truth, what ever works for you is true for you, etc.), after raising them on quick cut images and story lines that all resolve in 22 minutes (or 44 minutes), and then expect them to want to wade through Russian literature?

If it is all BS anyway, why should they work hard to think about complex BS?

I have another, and more fundamental, thought to throw out. For the last X years (the value of X depends upon your state) most public school reading instruction at the k-3 level has been "look and guess", or whole language. We have raised a generation of unfluent readers, for whom encountering text is always somewhat laborious (because the process hasn't become automatic and rapid). Reading is not natural and it is hard work....until it becomes automatic. If we have children for whom it is not yet automatic--even at the college level, no wonder they resist "long books".

I also think the television culture--not so much the existence of Sesame Street, but the practice of parking infants in front of the television set for hours has a lot to answer for. The American Pediatrics Association suggests no TV for children under 24 months, yet there are companies such as Baby Einstein
http://www.babyeinstein.com
merrily marketing "educational videos" for newborns.

USA Today recently published a popular report on a long term study linking many hours of video to ADHD. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-04-05-tv-bottomstrip_x.htm

Here is the citation for the underlying Pediatrics article:

Early Television Exposure and Subsequent Attentional Problems in Children
Christakis et al. Pediatrics.2004; 113: 708-713.

So what's the answer? Something like what happened to the acceptability of drinking and driving (think about it, it was perfectly acceptable socially in the 1960s and before); and smoking (same deal).

Who is going to start Mothers for Effective Reading Instruction?

How about Mothers Against Infant TV Viewing?

I'm sorry, I value Paglia as a gadfly counterweight to prevailing trends in literary theory, but her complaint is as old as the university itself: Lamenting the decline in literacy in college students. Only now instead of not studying Latin, it's the Internet that's to blame. Literacy of the kind she's extolling--the detailed exigesis of complexity--is an acquired skill in any day and age. Paglia's essay is useful in identifying the particular challenges presenting the current generation of students and teachers, but lamenting it is beside the point. Just devise pedagogical strategies and get on with it.

The average person has never had much of an attention span, not even at the time "Anna Karenna" was published. It's just that at Tolstoy's time only a few people read books such as his or Flaubert's. These days almost everybody goes to college, but human nature has yet to keep pace with developments. No wonder teachers like Paglia and Erin have a hard time convincing the average person to apply his/her nonexistent faculties to Kafka. Most students should rather watch football.

Amardeep said: "But I'm skeptical of Paglia's attempt to link the advent of internet culture to television, primarily because television has been around for 50 years, and the vast majority of people who are writing or teaching today are therefore products of televisual culture."

Exactly!!! Compare a typical Hollywood movie script today with one written during the 40s and 50s. You can't miss noticing that a particular script was written by someone who grew up with TV as a mentor.

The MTV generation has only made things worse - shortened attention spans are the most noticeable symptom.

Compare also today's TV commercials with those of the 40s and 50s - there's a vast difference in style and speed of presentation.

Stephen: (on the novel form being played out) Is that what happened to music? After about Mahler, everything that could be said about the Romantic idiom had been said, and we had to move on to atonal, 12-tone, and serial music (whether that's progress or not is another question).

"Uptight[!] Citizens Brigade: The art form once known as Comedy has deteriorated to a point where it is almost unrecognizeable. Steve Allen was funny, so were Lily Tomlin, the Smothers Brothers, Andy Kaufman, Bob Hope, Fibber McGee and Molly, Mark Tawin, and hundreds of others. Today's "comedians" seem to have only two wells to draw upon: sex and doo-doo - neither of which sustains any length of time.

J.V.C.: Good points!! (looking for patterns) I'm a programmer, and I knew immediately what you were talking bout. Maybe there needs to be taught the discipline of how to read a novel. "OK, kids, today we're going to start a wonderful book called 'Remembrance of Things Past'."

liz's point is more important than we might think. The other day I came across an article about the decline in manners in society. One of the causes the study seems to have identified is the decline in the "family dinner". (I personally have no data to observe here.) The claim was that kids are being sat down in front of the TV, alone, while the parents go eat somewhere else. I'd like to hear from anyone who has some experience here. But the effect - the decline in manners - is unmistakeable.

Kevin sees the next step: fix the problem. But first we have to see the problem, and agree that there is one, before we can get on with it.

Erin: You're suffering from Early Morning Post Syndrome: paragraph just before the last Paglia quote:

"Though Paglia makes some interesting passing comments about reading proper, her principle concern is with how young people today read images."

Write a 1200-word essay on the history and development of homonyms in English since William the Conqueror.

(It is a battle that goes on and on. No, no, not Hastings.....)

Mike:

Goodness. Homonym meltdown duly noted and corrected. This is what comes of eyestrain, fatigue, and wayyyyy too many jelly beans.

I love Jane Healy's books, probably because when I read them they validated everything I was already doing with my kid. She's not just down on TV, she's down on time spent being passively entertained or around caregivers who don't try to converse with the kid. The idea is that a child's brain actually develops in response to the child's environment and experiences, and she backs that idea up pretty well.

My child (17) loves to read long, involved, complicated novels. I did too at her age, and I still do. No one else in my family did. I think people either like this stuff or they don't, and I also think facility in reading is a huge factor in what and how much a person reads That may be largely genetic. My mother-in-law was taught by the old look-and-say method, and she's a voracious reader.

But I'll agree about the TV. We used to put the kid in front of "Babar" in the mornings while we all got ready for work and daycare, but apart from that she's never been a TV-watcher. We rent science fiction movies fairly frequently, both old and new, but that's different. (Right?)

This is why people should grow up reading comic books.

No, seriously. It trains you to deal with images and texts in a way that text alone and images alone can't. It allows the readers to learn to deal with prose and Film equally, by training the reader in convetions of both (as well as in conventions unique to comics).

And for anyone who claims comics can't deal with the same literary weight as the true classics - well, you're right. But still there are classics such as Maus (which won the Pulitzer), Watchmen, the Dark Knight Returns and American Splendor that approach the great classics.

What is interesting is that many comic specialty shops have "reading groups" where people do get together and discuss these texts at great length and in detail (The worst ones devolve into "this kicked ass man!" "Yeah, dude!" But the best ones rival many impromptu discussions of the Brothers Karamazov).

There is a vibrant literary community that takes its texts seriously and is trained in how to do close rhetorical readings that offer valuable insights.

It's not the English department (they're too wrapped up in the latest fads to notice) - it's the comic fan community.

Compare a typical Hollywood movie script today with one written during the 40s and 50s. You can't miss noticing that a particular script was written by someone who grew up with TV as a mentor.

Hold on, now -- the typical Hollywood script of that era was a B- or Z-grade movie that was no less silly, formulaic, hackneyed or full of caricature and shortcut than anything you'll find today. Let's not make the mistake of assuming that everything from that era was "Citizen Kane" or "All About Eve." Their dross was just as bad as ours. I'd really have to question how much growing up with TV is a factor here.

Compare also today's TV commercials with those of the 40s and 50s - there's a vast difference in style and speed of presentation.

But those commercials arose in a different context, one in which each program had, at the most, three sponsors, and most had one, which could leisurely introduce its products and services, usually with the assistance of the host or the stars. Once the FCC and the FTC made the advertisers get out of the program ownership business, sponsors had to compete against each other, and they had to do it quickly. The presentation style you refer to didn't arise because people were more literate and paid more attention; it arose because when the program is completely owned by Texaco, Texaco can take all the time it wants with its commercial messages.

Sure, MTV has had an enormous effect on editing style and presentation, but each era's programs and commercials reflect new developments in technology and media. I don't know that today's is qualitatively worse.

Sorry to burst bubbles, but a quick scan of the history news network files reveals similar complaints going back to the 1890s and even earlier. There is no objective evidence that students read less although they do play outside less and get less exercise than those 50 years ago. Nor is there anything other than anecdotal evidence that says comparable groups of students are getting worse at writing or reading. The major difference between students then and now is one of time, more college students work full and part time jobs than ever before. If you have less time to study, than you have less time to read long, boring books. How many people actually enjoy Proust? I don't, but I happily slogged my way through Charles Sellars' Market Revolution - twice - which I think most people would revile. Why did I do it? Don't know. Don't care. Do I think others should? Only if they want an interesting take on Jacksonian America. Still not sure what I was supposed to get out of the Proust. Or John Dos Passos. Or...

Can you please supply the missing word(s) in this sentence?

Say what you will about the historicity of consciousness, the new forms of synthesis and skill enabled by facility with new media, the sheer kinesis--not to mention thrill--of a world where thought shapes itself by and through the speeding shift of images and discursive frames

Posted by nagol rotceps at April 12, 2004 10:25 AM

...is to be welcomed as an energetic release from the staid forces of written dogma which ruled the "good old days" of false permanence, they now having been relegated to their proper place in the graveyard of the antiquated, Eurocentric fossils who exerted their petrified hegemony througout the world, only to find they had failed humanity, it now so assertively recaptured by the electromagnetic vibrance and instataneosity of the new Internet World Order of total access of one to the world and the world to each one, producing the unity of existence only promised but not delivered by those who previously captured the hopes of mankind in a staid book of frustrated prophecies and revelations, much as slaves were put beneath decks in the darkness of sin and depravity, held from the light of unfettered motion of thought, captive by masters of only the worst of Hyde's characteristics in their neverending drive for profit and control of souls. So much for the historicity of consciousness. Amen.

I may be digressing here, but I would like to address the example of computer programmers as readers that has been discussed in several posts. The first is that, in my experience, "reading" computer code does not have the same effect on my thought processes as reading a long novel. Code is logical and precise, but it cannot address the subjects that a good book does -- history, religion, philosophy, etc. I do not believe that reading the vast majority of computer books will help the programmer grow as a person. (There are noticeable exceptions, such as Quentin J. Schultze's Habits of the High-Tech Heart, but they are usually only secondarily classified as technology books, and lack code at all.) Additionally, programming will not usually help to improve one's writing skills. Because code is written for a computer, other people do not need to understand it. The lines of communication are completely different. Reading somebody else's code is often like reading their notes taken in class, complete with shorthand and indecipherable sections.

I personally blame the rise of instant messaging as a major contributor to the next generation's lack of respect for communicating in proper English, but that is truly a different topic.

Princess...I think you're right about the differences between reading/writing computer code and reading/writing English, with one very important exception. Experience in working with *any* symbolic system that requires sustained concentration and thought...computer code, legal briefs, electrical wiring diagrams, financial statements...helps develop habits of concentration which seem like they *must* be transferrable.

I have to disagree with Princess. A really good coder can read C++ like a novel, and really well written C++ code is as elegant and thought provoking as any novel. Other people do read it, as well. Code is usually written as a team effort.

The "growth as a person" comes from doing service and sublimating one's immediate gratification to that service to others and toward the society as a whole.

As we move toward an interface that can actually interact and communicate in human ways with people, we are grappling with the great moral issues... just in a new way. As I said earlier, the paradigm of the good guy versus the bad guy characteristic of the novel has been worn out. The paradigm toward which we are striving is an media environment in which the individual can test the morality of limitless paths of action, and experience the outcomes of each path. We are moving, as a result of the efforts of coders, toward being able to actually put ourselves in the shoes of another.

This new paradigm is an avenue for moral growth. The real issue that I think irritates Princess is that the individual ego is not the target.

I'm not a programmer by trade, but I've read code. It ain't Pride and Prejudice.

Laura's and Princess' comments are both very interesting. I refer you back to my first comment. Delusions of grandeur have crippled the average English department and rendered the novel a very foolish thing.

As somebody who is very well read, has written a novel and is a first rate coder, let me say that the problem is entirely one of ego (and not one from which I am exempt). The average English department is making a mistake in thinking that the future will be determined by individuals making great moral pronouncements on grand issues.

The future will be determined by thousands of coders who recognize that the process of addressing tiny procedures and getting them right does more for people than any flourish of moral grandstanding.

It kind of sticks in the craw, I know. I struggled with it myself. The humanities intelligensia can barely stand this. As an analogy, let me say this. Feminists like to think that the great change in the status of women is due to ideological wrangling and posturing. I think that, centuries hence, historians will agree that cheap, readily available birth control was the real catalyst for change. In other words, a technician in a lab, working on a small problem in great detail was the real hero. The notion that ideology played a large part is a conceit applied in retrospect for the purpose of assuaging the egos of those in the humanities who want to think that they played an important role.

Princess and I aren't talking about English departments. We're talking about people reading novels. (Princess, sorry if I'm mischaracterizing you.)

"...[R]eally well written C++ code is as elegant and thought provoking as any novel."

Naw.

I was a kid long before Pacman but everyone I grew up with watched a lot of TV. And we still read books. And there's an incredible number of accomplished people around so I don't think that everyone became dummies.

Maybe there are changes in attention span but heck, the "greatest generation" (of WW2) doesn't seem all that great and they didn't have TV, just movies and radio. Or maybe the movies and jazz music had already started the deteriortation and TV and the internet are only continuations of the downward spiral?

ch...you're assessing the WWII generation as "not all that great" as compared to what?...it seems unlikely that you could have personal knowledge of any earlier generation unless you're a lot older than I think you are....

Dave,

About the greatest generation. I appreciate very much what they did in the war but, realistically, these were just ordinary guys. Archie Bunker is the greatest generation. Gunther Plaut was a chaplain in the US forces during WW2 and he said in his memoir that when the US army was entering Germany many of the men did not know why they were there. Then they came back here and went on with their normal, largely uneducated, and often prejudiced lives.

Were they smarter than their children? Well, they were willing to accept top-down command in their working lives. But their kids haven't been because they knew they were as well-educated as their bosses.

And grandchildren? When I see a video or an ad full of very fast cuts from a dozen different angles, I tend to think that this might be distorting one's attention span. But I don't know if it's really true.

And, as for reading long Russian novels, I'm sure that there were more of them being read in 1965 than 1935 when there wasn't any TV.

Besides, in the 19th century weren't most novels issued in serial form? I know that Dickens was. He used to listen in on people wondering what would happen next in one of his stories when he didn't know himself. And, Herbert Spencer, the 19th philosopher bragged that he never read a book, only scholarly magazines.

By the way, if you want to meet pre-WW2 and indeed pre-20th century people, not in terms of chronology but culture, there's always been plenty of them in Toronto. They're nice people. The women sit on the porch staring at the street in the summer and the men hang out on the sidewalks playing cards. Are their attention spans longer and more focussed? I've never measured but I doubt if any have sat through many lectures.

Here's another disagreement with Princess:

Because code is written for a computer, other people do not need to understand it.

I was born in 1947. Before there were TV's in every living room, most kids were outside till bedtime playing. Sure, there were a few bookworms inside reading, but most of us were outside kicking cans, hiding and seeking, playing cowboys and Indians (before we were taught that this was wrong!) or piecing together a makeshift softball diamond using roadside litter for bases. It was a terribly unenlightened time.

Every generation has its readers and thinkers and its non-readers--many of whom actually do think and should not be discounted because they do not read. Why do readers presume they have cornered the market when it comes to being thoughtful--and smart? And good. I wonder how many novels Mother Theresa read, but then again, she may have been too busy to read.

Some folks actually live thoughtful, meaningful lives without ever picking up a novel or a book of computer code, whatever that is.

That said, I agree with the comments here regarding the state of affairs in English and humanities departments everywhere. The teaching lectern has become a soapbox for spewing political rhetoric and it's a sad thing. People have to resort to the internet just to get a different point of view than the party line goop that's piped through the trenches at college these days.Too bad.

Kirk, I think you're splitting hairs. Of course other programmers need to be able to read Princess's code. Record a macro in "Excel" sometime and then open it and look at it. Should a non-programmer be able to understand that with the same facility as "You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter."? Why?

I have to disagree with those who are down on reading computer code. I was a programmer for over 40 years and over time I was able to see the logic of the original programmer at work in his code. If I knew the programmer I could see the way his mind worked in the approach to coding.

I was particularly known as one who could find and fix problems quickly and efficiently. The reason I could, in my not so humble opinion, was that I could put myself in the mind of the person who wrote the code and see where the flow of the process was leading and also see where the flaws were. This is quite analogous to reading a good book. By trying to see through the eyes and mind of the author I can see what the author sees and understand much of what the author does. I can also since I am outside of the action as well as inside the action see what the author is missing.

What I have seen in my years of business experience is that people are not really being taught the principles of cause and effect. I have had to train so many people who worked with and for me over the years to see that if I did thus and so at this point in time then the result further down the road would be something other than what was wanted. From my education it seemed obvious. From what I have seen in the younger ones, it is not obvious at all and they quite often miss the flaws completely.

Good reading