Wolf on Reading – Key questions
My experience at the Shanghai Learning2.0 conference overlaid on recent reading has left me wondering more than ever about technological change, the increasingly sharp rate at which it is happening – and about the consequences, both hoped for, and unintended, of the same.
In “Proust and the Squid”, Maryanne Wolf raises a host of questions about the future of the reading brain as a result of the the move to “digital literacy”, and conversely, about the future of reading as a possible consequence of these potential changes in the brain. She is careful to draw no conclusions, but her questions are grist for mill of many philosophical meanderings.
Wolf lays out the basic questions in her introduction, p. 22
- “What is being lost and what is being gained for so many young people who have largely replaced books with the multidimensional “continuous partial attention” culture of the Internet?’
- “What are the implications of seemingly limitlesss information for the evolution of the reading brain for us and for the species?”
- “Does the rapid, almost insantaneous presentation of expansive informaton threaten the more time-demanding formation of in-depth knowledge?”
Near the end of the book, on p. 213, she quotes Ray Kurzweil in his belief that;
- “We can have confidence that we will have the data-gathering and computational tools needed by bye 2020’s to model and simulate the entire brain,…” and
- “We will also benefit from the inherent strength of machines in storing, retrieving, and quickly sharing massive amounts of information.”
From this, however, Wolf concludes, not that the results will all be rosy and should such come to pass with all possible speed, but instead, that;
- “One thing we can imagine is that our capacities for good and for destruction will also be exponentially increased. If we are to prepare for such a future, our ability to make profound choices must be honed witha rigor rarely practiced by learners in past generations.” and;
- (Wolf) differ(s) with Kurzweil’s impicit assumption that an exponential acceleration of thought processes is altogether positive. In music, in poetry, and in life, the rest, the pause, the slow movements are essential to comprehending the whole.”
Socrates would, (pause 
) I think, concur with Wolf’s final point…
So what do we do with these questions? Well, speaking for myself only, I read articles like Mark Bauerlein’s Online Literacy is a Lesser Kind and look for significant congruence between his questions and those Wolf raises. I read each new piece with a gradually expanding awareness, and perhaps, a slightly more anaylytical perspective – “edging ahead”, as it were, in my thinking.
I hope that in examining carefully all sides of the issues, that I will be both critical of past failings and discerning of both the promise and the peril of future possibilities. I hope, in short, to become a more informed learner, and so a better mentor to the students in my charge.
