‘Unreasonable’: E-book hate detracts from The Age of American Unreason
“…she weakens her argument by ranting with an elitist tone against modern life with its slang, informality and new gadgets. Having downloaded her book to my digital reader, I found her hostility to eBooks silly.” - USA Today reviewer Deirdre Donahue on Susan Jacoby’s The Age of American Unreason.
The TeleRead take: E-books can expand the range of books available and make them usable in new ways; that’s hardly a threat to the national IQ. The challenge is to blend them in well with local schools and libraries and encourage young people to love immersive reading—as opposed to simply flitting from link to link. I haven’t read the Jacoby book yet, but certainly would agree with many of the points she reportedly makes, and I hope she’ll reconsider her condemnation of E.
Related: Dumber and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?, in the New York Times.
February 28th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
One question I would like to ask: Why does she hate her own culture so much?
If she denies the question, then I would ask her what evidence did she have that suggested American peasants were any more ignorant than peasants at any time in history? Honestly, that’s what most people are, peasants. This is not bad, only a statement of fact.
Here’s the thing: if a person doesn’t regularly use a peice of knowledge, that knowledge will be forgotten. This is normal; it’s how minds work. Ask yourself how much of your high school EnglishLit/Math/Civics class do you remember? (Pick one you don’t use everyday.)
What use does a peasant have for the names of countries in Europe? For the most part, very little. So when that girl demonstrated that she knew less than a fifth grader, it was normal.
February 28th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
I am disappointed that an interesting blog like Teleread spends time discussing worthless bs like that book.
The only comment I have for all such junk peddlers is to show us when there was that mythic age of enlightenment and rationality…
February 28th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
So a smug intellectual writes a book arguing that there aren’t enough smug intellectuals in her part of the world. Those darn kids with their Facebooks and their videogames and their fancy iPods just aren’t like the good old days when we sat around the junior high playground debating Sartre and Eisenhower’s foreign policy.
She blames Xbox’s and TV. Personally, I blame that damn rock n’ roll.