The object you hold in your hand may one day be a collector's item. Among cultural theorists, business leaders, futurists, educators and just about everybody, the debate du jour concerns the future of print media in the souped-up age of electronic media. The second is more vexing because it touches cognitive, emotional and commercial spheres. The electronic epoch is upon us. We have reached a critical mass in that electronic media have decisively and irreversibly changed the character of our symbolic environment.
Postman rails against television's influence on youngsters.
We are now well into a second generation of children for whom television has been their first and most accessible teacher and their most reliable companion and friend. The difference between words on a page and words on a screen is the difference between product and process, between noun and verb. The oral culture didn't suddenly disappear when print arose. Ulman, like Katz, is bemused by the hyperventilation in behalf of traditional media. Birkerts casts us as victims of technology.