I used to think it was all education; but when she recently responded to Joe Lieberman with a ‘who dis?’ I realized that there is more to it than that.
I was reminded of a book I’ve been reading. We’ve created an entire generation who don’t know how to think; see everything through memes and buzzwords; and many of them have never even read an entire book. Even the ways in which their brains function (or dysfunction!) have become very different:
The internet has a downside in making information available very selectively, as in google searches, which only look for what you ask. It is a rifle shot as opposed to a shotgun blast, which goes all over the place with information you didn’t ask for but are better off having been exposed to. Books are shotguns, the internet a rifle.
It used to be that the main benefit of a college education was that you learned how to use the library. I wonder if that’s still true.
Jan Healy predicted this back in the nineties.