THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (FACEBOOK EDITION)
Sep. 22nd, 2009 01:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogPeople often ask me why I’m generally not that worried about the youth of today, what with their crazy clothes, wild music, illiterate text messaging and social networking replacing actual human communication.
The answer is simple: it’s all been said before.
Not verbatim, of course. But every new form of communication has been derided by traditionalists as something that will make things worse instead of better. Plato was against writing things down because it would rob our ability to retain knowledge in our heads and it wasn’t interactive.
Ha ha. Good one, Plato.
Anyway, for more information, see this interesting interview with Dennis Baron, a professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who has written a book chronicling this very phenomenon:
ADDENDUM: I think the same applies to music, incidentally. All the criticisms you hear about today’s chart-toppers having a negative influence on the youth? Our parents used to say the exact same thing about our heavy metal albums. And look how we turned out.
The downward spiral,
This is dF
The answer is simple: it’s all been said before.
Not verbatim, of course. But every new form of communication has been derided by traditionalists as something that will make things worse instead of better. Plato was against writing things down because it would rob our ability to retain knowledge in our heads and it wasn’t interactive.
Ha ha. Good one, Plato.
Anyway, for more information, see this interesting interview with Dennis Baron, a professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who has written a book chronicling this very phenomenon:
Baron seeks to provide the historical context that is often missing from debates about the way technology is transforming our lives in his new book, "A Better Pencil." His thesis is clear: Every communication advancement throughout human history, from the pencil to the typewriter to writing itself, has been met with fear, skepticism and a longing for the medium that's been displaced.
ADDENDUM: I think the same applies to music, incidentally. All the criticisms you hear about today’s chart-toppers having a negative influence on the youth? Our parents used to say the exact same thing about our heavy metal albums. And look how we turned out.
The downward spiral,
This is dF
