Monday, January 07, 2008

Albert Mohler: The Twilight of the Books?
Monday, January 07, 2008

Years ago, Walter Ong argued that our civilization is returning to a condition of "orality" in which the text gives way to the tongue. Actually, Ong argued that this condition is actually a form of "secondary orality" since the culture had once been literate -- but willingly gave up reading. The great civilizational achievement of literacy was being surrendered to a new non-literate age, fueled by television and mass electronic culture.

The bare fact is that reading is not an important part of the lives of many persons -- including millions who can read. Americans have far more leisure time then ever before, but they fill those hours with everything from television to video games to surfing the internet. These media often use words, but they may also be the great enemies of literacy.

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