The dawn of the post-literate society

And the end of civilisation

https://jmarriott.substack.com/p/the-dawn-of-the-post-literate-society-aa1

“The world is entering a “post-literate” age, with huge implications for societies’ politics and structure, a leading British writer argued. The dawn of the printing press unleashed a widespread democratization of knowledge, but the smartphone’s emphasis on photos and videos has driven a decline in reading, a consequence of which is that a growing number of people are unable to grapple with complex ideas and nuanced arguments, James Marriott wrote. “This increasingly trivial and mindless culture is a calamity for our politics,” he said. “We may be about to find out that it is not possible to run the most advanced civilization in the history of the planet with the intellectual apparatus of a pre-literate society.”” (Via Semafor)