“The New Dark Ages: The Death of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society,” James Marriott, Doubleday, 2026
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.etymonline.com/columns/post/last-call-for-literacy:-‘the-new-dark-ages’
Excellently written. Especially the jab at the smartass author who’s political views are so important to put into his oh so neutral book
Great article, Doug!
Initially I sort of regretted not having read “The New Dark Ages”, as it seemed to mirror quite accurately my unease in witnessing helplessly a general progressive shrinking of culture, literacy, deep knowledge and other values that have been playing a major role in my education since I stopped sucking my thumb.
Then, as I read on, I gradually felt an increasing gratitude to you for having read the book in my stead and reviewed it with your typical subdued wit, thus saving me an additional blood pressure pill 
But I won’t commit the capital sin of pontificating upon a mere hearsay: for all I know a bit of sycophancy and hypocrisy might as well be justified by the goal of captivating the reader and surreptitiously converting him to literacy – but alas, the medium would still be the wrong one: a book “Learn to read in 10 days” would achieve the same success 
As for the matter itself, the progressive atrophy of literacy etc., I’m not 100% sure about the cause of it but in principle I tend to agree with Marriott: collectively speaking (with a few exceptions, thank goodness) Homo sapiens is a lazy animal that will always choose the line of least resistance: pre-chewed hamburger over unchewed steak, cable car over climbing the mountain, watching a movie over fantasizing, prêt à porter ideas over self-made ones… TV and smartphones fit pretty well into the picture: reading a book entails a considerable stretch of the imagination, the effort of turning pages and the struggle to remember names, while watching a screen or getting from a social what and how one should think is way easier.
And no, please don’t ask me if this will mark the end of the humankind, I’ll be damned if I know. There are still those few exceptions mentioned above, despicable anarchists who junk the TV set, use the smartphone to stabilize a rickety table, ban Google from their virtual world and keep stubbornly perusing old obsolete books to expand their Weltanschauung, so not all hope is lost 