Today the paperback edition of The Dumbest Generation comes out (see here and here), and you can read an excerpt from the preface here.
The cloth version appeared exactly one year ago, and attention to the issue it raised — both positive (New York Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, USA Today) and negative (Newsweek, Washington Post, Toronto Globe & Mail), along with some 135 media interviews so far — indicated, I think, that the time was right for arguments and cautions counter to the techno-enthusiasm and pro-digital policies gaining ground with the advent of Web 2.0.
Several other books joined in last year to stem the digital tide led by figures such as Don Tapscott, Steven Johnson, the MacArthur Foundation digital-media and learning-project participants, and many others in the education and marketing fields. They include
Andrew Kean, The Cult of the Amateur: How Blogs, Wikis, Social Networking, and the Digital World Are Assaulting Our Economy, Culture and Values.
Lee Siegel, Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob.
Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google.
Maggie Jackson, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age.
These and other books, articles, commentaries, and op-eds questioning the values and implications of Web 2.0, especially for the young, provide a healthy dose of skepticism about the direction of culture and classrooms. They don’t close the debate, but instead open it to concerns not always heard in, for instance, initiatives to provide a laptop for every middle school student in a state. (See here for an important pro/con project on the issue by Frontline.)
We won’t know of the effects of the Digital Revolution for many years to come, but the stakes are high, not only the funding that goes into digitalizing schools but the characters and intellects shaped by thousands of hours before a screen instead of with a book. Just think what younger Americans might become if they took two hours from their nine hours a week social networking (as estimated by the National School Boards Association), or if instead of sending and receiving 1,742 text messages per month (that’s the average number for teens with a mobile device, according to Nielsen) they cut it down to 1,000 per month, and devoted the extra time to reading op-ed pages, practicing a musical instrument, becoming an amateur of the Civil War or of earmarks in 2009 or of American architecture or . . .
