Website review: What is the worth of words? - The ...
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laodan rated 22 months ago- What is the worth of words? in MSNBC by Michael Rogers. It's time to acknowledge that in a truly multimedia environment of 2025, most Americans don't need to understand more than a hundred or so words at a time, and certainly will never read anything approaching the length of an old-fashioned book. We need a frank reassessment of where long-form literacy itself lies in the spectrum of skills that a modern nation requires of its workers. ... just as every citizen is not forcibly trained to enjoy classical music, neither should they be coerced into believing that reading is necessarily pleasurable. We have made at least two generations of American children miserable trying to teach them a skill that only a small percentage of them really need. And we have wasted billions of dollars that might well have gone for more practical education and training. In 2025 it's time to put reading into perspective for the remainder of the 21st century: it is a luxury, not a necessity! URL: What is the worth of words?
From a purely functional perspective, yes, societal organizations of the future will most probably not require high reading, writing, calculating or other thinking skills from most of their citizens. But we have to know what we want. Our technological paradigm leading to always more automation reduces our input to to the action of "button pushers". Now there are two ways to push a button. One is to push because of an order to do so, the other is to push because of the knowledge of its consequence. Those two ways correspond to 2 very different societal outcomes. If most of us are given only the skills to be button pushers, well, then the ensuing societies will be governed by a tiny clique of capital holders following slavishly the logic of capital without there ever being any opposition to their decisions. One can imagine that big capital holders would be very satisfied indeed by such an outcome and it should thus not come as a surprise that the dumbing down of humanity would be part of their strategy. If most of us are given the knowledge to think then the ensuing societies will be composed of FREE people deciding in all knowledge what is best for them, their families and their friends. It is our personal choice to be slave or to be free!
- What is the worth of words? in MSNBC by Michael Rogers. It's time to acknowledge that in a truly multimedia environment of 2025, most Americans don't need to understand more than a hundred or so words at a time, and certainly will never read anything approaching the length of an old-fashioned book. We need a frank reassessment of where long-form literacy itself lies in the spectrum of skills that a modern nation requires of its workers. ... just as every citizen is not forcibly trained to enjoy classical music, neither should they be coerced into believing that reading is necessarily pleasurable. We have made at least two generations of American children miserable trying to teach them a skill that only a small percentage of them really need. And we have wasted billions of dollars that might well have gone for more practical education and training. In 2025 it's time to put reading into perspective for the remainder of the 21st century: it is a luxury, not a necessity! URL: What is the worth of words?
