This is a well-argued and dare I say literate response to critics of screen culture. "When you've closed 800 libraries and gutted the infrastructure through which people build reading communities," writes Doug Belshaw, "blaming screens is a conclusion in search of a cause." Woven through the argument is Belshaw's account of what it means to be literate. "To be literate is to be part of a literate community. This involves sharing references, arguing about ideas, and having the knowledge to participate in discourse." Different communities have different kinds of literacies. It's also a good response, to my mind, to the argument based on 'cognitive offloading' and AI. "These young people weren't less capable than previous cohorts; they were differently capable." Ultimately, "If we want to defend democracy, we should be defending the conditions that make critical engagement with it possible."
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