“GEE THAT'S GREAT”

Is the new media environment making us dumber or just different? It seems everyone is weighing in on the question these days, whether in books lamenting The Dumbest Generation and The Age of American Unreason or in articles asking whether the Internet is making us stupid or at least hastening the twilight of book reading.Not all observers are angst-ridden. Recently New York Times columnist David Brooks dryly observed that "on or about June 29, 2007," the release date of the first iPhone, media displaced culture, and "the means of transmission replaced the content of culture as the center of historical excitement." But Brooks seemed more bemused than alarmed by the fact that what he calls "aggregators and appraisers" and other "lords of the memes" are the new cultural elite.

-US News & World Report
August 28 2008