Words, pictures, mush

It makes no sense complaining about the decline of the printed word. As it becomes just another medium, we are moving to a kind of multimedia literacy, where capability with print becomes no more important, or useful, than capability with image.

Graeme Philipson in The Age this week.

Philipson has three main arguments, all familiar:
1. New media don’t supplant old media – the ‘people still go to the movies’ argument.
2. People are busily writing emails and reading text online so it’s only a shift of delivery: literacy is if anything enhanced.
3. as above

1 and 2 are boilerplate. What’s interesting though is 3. which just pops up as it routinely does in these pieces. All evidence from neurology and evolutionary psychology, the careful arguments of people like Walter Ong – all the evidence, that is, which shows that for rational beings, language is both unique and essential is lost on these people. Maybe because the serious discussion takes place in books.