Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Brandon Booth on April 12, 2012 at 9:34am

This is a very helpful book: You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (Vintage)

Permalink Reply by Jesse Hake on April 12, 2012 at 10:22am

It is far from classical in orientation and radically pro-technology, but I recently read What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly (2010). More on topic but still at a basic or popular level, I have also read The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr (2011). Mining the “Further Reading” at the end of Carr’s book (pages 253+), yields a list of pertinent titles. Saenger, Ong, Jackson, Baron, Moss strike me in particular as valuable future reading. Has anyone read any of these? Here are the titles from Carr’s list that seemed most on topic (with a few being clearly in line with a classical philosophy of education):

• Baron, Naomi S. Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World. Oxford UP, 2008.
• Birkerts, Sven. The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. Faber and Faber, 1994.
• Buller, David J. Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature. MIT Press, 2005.
• Chappell, Warren. A Short History of the Printed Word. Knopf, 1970.
• Cowan, Nelson. Working Memory Capacity. Psychology Press, 2005.
• Crystal, David. Language and the Internet, 2^nd ed. Cambridge UP, 2006.
• Dehaene, Stanislas. Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention. Viking, 2009.
• Diringer, David. The Hand-Produced Book. Philosophical Library, 1953.
• Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Cambridge UP, 1980. (Also printed in an abridged edition as The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge UP, 2005.)
• Goody, Jack. The Interface between the Written and the Oral. Cambridge UP, 1987.
• Havelock, Eric. Preface to Plato. Harvard UP, 1963.
• Heidegger, Martin. The Question concerning Technology and Other Essays. Harper and Row, 1977.
• Innis, Harold. The Bias of Communication. U of Toronto P, 1951.
• Jackson, Maggie. Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. Prometheus, 2008.
• Kandel, Eric R. In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind. Norton, 2006.
• Kemeny, John G. Man and Computer. Scribner, 1972.
• Kilgour, Frederick G. A History of Reading. Viking, 1996.
• Kittler, Friedrich A. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Stanford UP, 1999.
• Klingberg, Torkel. The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory. Oxford UP, 2008.
• LeDoux, Joseph. Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are. Penguin, 2002.
• Levy, David M. Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age. Arcade, 2001.
• Martensen, Robert L. The Brain Takes Shape: An Early History. Oxford UP, 2004.
• Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. Oxford UP, 2000.
• McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. U of Toronto P, 1962.
• McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extension of Man. critical ed. Gingko, 2003.
• Moss, Ann. Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought. Oxford UP, 1996.
• Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilization. Harcourt Brace, 1934.
• Nunberg, Geoffrey, ed. The Future of the Book. U of California P, 1996.
• Olson, David R. The World on Paper: The Conceptual and Cognitive Implications of Writing and Reading. Cambridge UP, 1994.
• Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. Routledge, 2002.
• Saenger, Paul. Space between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading. Stanford UP, 1997.
• Schwartz, Jeffery M. and Sharon Begley. The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force. Harper Perennial, 2002.
• Weizenbaum, Joseph. Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation. Freeman, 1976.
• Wexler, Bruce E. Brain and Culture: Neurobiology, Ideology, and Social Change. MIT Press, 2006.
• Wiener, Norbert. The Human Use of Human Beings. Houghton Mifflin, 1950.
• Wolf, Maryanne. Proust and the Squid: The Story and the Science of the Reading Brain. Harper, 2007.
• Young, J.Z. Doubt and Certainty in Science: A Biologist’s Reflections on the Brain. Oxford UP, 1951.

Permalink Reply by Michael Patrick Forth on April 25, 2012 at 10:25am

Brandon, can you explain how you found this book to be helpful?  I found it so unhelpful that I put it down & didn't finish it.

Brandon Booth said:

This is a very helpful book: You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (Vintage)

Permalink Reply by Ryan J. Birsinger on May 29, 2012 at 1:51pm

Neal Stephenson - The Diamond Age

A novel, about a oppressed futuristic, neo-Victorian society that has primers for girls written on 'smart paper' that write themselves as the girl grows up giving guidance for their present situation.  Is it relevant for this discussion?  Not sure, but it is a great read.