A new dark age?
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Context piece
- James Marriott’s book examines how digital technology, especially social media, affects people’s lives, thinking and reading habits.
- The book argues that screen culture is displacing print culture and weakening the forms of thinking associated with reading.
- Marriott links the spread of literacy and print-based thought to economic development, scientific progress and modern democracy.
James Marriott’s The New Dark Ages: The End of Reading and the Dawn of a Post-Literate Society enters a growing debate over technology’s influence on how people live and think.
The British journalist’s book focuses on the damaging side of digital technology, particularly the possibility that people are reading less as screen culture displaces print culture.
Marriott argues that the spread of literacy and the habits of thought encouraged by print helped drive economic development, scientific advancement and the rise of modern democracy. In a print culture, he says, knowledge is organized, understood and contextu...
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Originally published by Dawn. Summarized and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.
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