On the train this afternoon, I was reading an article in the New Yorker about energy efficiency and the Jevons paradox, which is basically that greater energy efficiency will not lead to as much of a reduction in energy use as might be assumed because it will lead to greater demand and greater productivity.
Doing some reading around the internet when I got back home, I came across a review of Dennis Baron's book, A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution, which examines the technological improvements in written communication over the last few thousand years.
And I really feel like the two have something in common, or at least that my opinion about the second can be expressed using the sentiment of the first. Yeah, there's a lot of noise out there. Yes, I spend far too much time on Facebook.* And yes, I am extremely fortunate to not only have my own computer, but two computers and an iphone, which means that I have access to the internet at virtually all minutes of the day, and there are a lot of people who don't have the kind of access I've become dependent on. But.
Computers allow us to write more, to write a lot more, to self-publish, to read more, to read a wider array of things - nonsense or otherwise - and all this reading and writing makes reading and writing more widely available because of the increase in productivity and the subsequent demand for more reading and writing. So arguing that digital media in some way impairs literacy doesn't really make any sense when you get down to it.
*I wish to point out here that most of what I'm doing on Facebook is reading the articles that my friends post, seeing if anyone's playing or reading or publishing or showing or whatever, and all the posts about your baby being sick or the laundry you are or are not doing, I don't care. I'm just kidding, I care deeply. And also I'm stalking you. And reading your blog.
Read my magazine.
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