Eeyore recommends What we think is a decline in literacy is a design problem | Aeon Essays for those still worrying about demon screens instead of demon AI.
As someone who has come to love e-readers, despite some problems outlined by Warren Farha, I substantially agree.
@ReaderJohn Yes, much to agree with — but I think the breeziness of “just choreograph your environment-attention match” underestimates how confused the average educator is about whether and how to (dramatically) constrain the design of the formative environments of young people. (I know you know!)
@ablerism I will be picking up a new e-reader this morning, and although it is built on an android platform, I plan on disabling or not installing most of the potential distractions, like not installing Signal, email accounts, synchronized calendar, etc.
@ReaderJohn Right! And I suspect most of my fellow professors would say: Tell students that this course of ReaderJohn’s actions are the rational way to choreograph one’s attention. Go thou and do likewise. And I find myself making the repeated developmental (and simply animal passions) argument that we abandon young people when we make this choreography a mere rational recommendation. Just hatching some thoughts to maybe write on this at length? That essay echoes much of the insight from the social model of disability but (like disability studies itself) misses the dependent-rational-animal insight for behavior.
@JohnBrady I particularly like the Kanelos quotes. I think I’m already tending to get paper books when I think a subject is especially important and enduring. Further, my regular, somewhat randomized (Readwise service) review of highlights from ebooks serves some of the same “ongoing dialog” ends.
@JohnBrady A digital Apostol in Liturgy?! Yeah, I think that would creep me out even though I compile the music for Matins in digital form and sing from an iPad (discreetly invisible to most in the Nave as it sits on the Cliros).
@ablerism I ventured a brief response to the essay, focusing on problems I see with the analysis, but I would love more thoughts on the what-to-do side of this if you get around to it. Perhaps the future of education is in creating and maintaining these “habitats of attention” so that learners have a place to develop away from the noise. Public schools are at least gesturing this way with bell to bell phone bans. (I don’t take for granted that I was born just early enough to have many screen free years). I can imagine a world where having a degree signals something more like “can focus and execute complicated tasks” rather than “has been exposed to and tested on a standard set of facts.” @ReaderJohn
@isaacgreene I’m replying as a way of digitally making myself a fly-on-the-wall to this conversation. It’s something I think about daily.
@davoh I think all of us in education do. I’m immensely proud of my music students who spend hours and hours a week in focused practice. I’m not sure they fully appreciate how countercultural a practice that is.
@isaacgreene our campus paper today has an article by a student who has gone offline, and it also carries a debate between two students about whether to allow screens in the classroom. Both of these things made me glad.
@isaacgreene Thanks for those thoughts. And I’m with you — I think your last line is the heart of the matter. Older adults have to model this intentional choreography, and we have to both 1) decide how to constrain-to-liberate in our classrooms while also 2) helping students want to want that life. We have to make that life with intentional habitats irresistible and joyous, not merely acts of refusal, right?
@ReaderJohn Interesting conversation! But the thing that bothers me most about my life as it pertains to my e-library hasn’t been mentioned yet, in either essay or in the discussion here: I own a hundred books that I can’t possibly share with anyone, unless I lend someone my e-reader itself. It’s troubling, to “own” something that my friends can’t borrow from me. I think the un-lendability of e-books, the anti-shareability (barring software like Libby, which can only be implemented by institutions, not individuals) is a concern that simply can’t be ameliorated. That’s the main reason I’ve shifted back towards buying physical books, even when they’re a bit more expensive than the Kindle sale price.
@aemiliana I’m impressed that you know people who return books. (I’ve got about five right now that, ummmm, belong to other people.)
@ReaderJohn I just want to know why the phrase “there’s nothing to be done but write elegiac essays from a comfortable distance” appears twice in the (non-elegiac) essay. I assume either the author or his editor failed to create an architectural environment conducive to close enough reading to catch the repetition.
@bethanyh Thanks for confirming that the essay didn’t get any less sloppy after the first few paragraphs (which is all I bothered to read).
