> All of this is related to Google Reader, all of this is true. BUT there's no causation here, as much as some people want to believe it. Reader didn't take off because most people didn't use it.

As someone who never used Google Reader and therefore doesn't really care either way about it, I can live with that, because the article raises points that strike me as generally true, and are discussed to rarely for my taste.

> Most people found it too hard and found Facebook + Twitter way easier

You said this about Google Reader, but I'd like to take it out of context and go on a tangent (because when all you have is an off-road bike, everything looks like a ramp :D)

I don't think anyone denies that literacy is really important, some would call it a human right, or at least something deriving from human rights. But what would constitute "literacy in the information age"? Or maybe even "just" "web literacy"?

Being able to sign up to Facebook? Being able to write HTML and CSS? Being able to code a little, enough to be able to discern cool projects from total charlatans? Being able to code well enough to do anything they could possibly want their computer to do, and to contribute to the pool from which they took in however small ways?

I don't know where to exactly draw the line, but I am positive that signing up for Facebook is not enough (regardless of what Facebook might tell people, duh). It's easy, but it leads nowhere, or not very far. It is akin to having someone read and write for you, instead of ever learning it. Perfectly acceptable in the short run, when there is no other choice, but pathetic, a complete no-no, in the long run.

Our society would be even more of a cold, dark cellar without widespread literacy. Not that everyone reads, but most people at least could if they wanted to, sometimes they do when it's necessary, and that helps. With that in mind, I worry about how naively we treat this brave new computerized world.

There is this quote that predates the web but which the web constantly makes me think of, and which I believe goes hand in hand with another one:

"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." -- A. J. Liebling
"Do you belong in journalism?", The New Yorker (14 May 1960)

"If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them." -- George Orwell

Yes, not being able to think is easier. I know, I've been there. But only in the short run, in the long run it makes everything impossibly hard.

The web as we know it, isn't even two decades old, and we already act all wise about it, that "that's just how it is". Yet we didn't give up on literacy for hundreds of years, if not millenia. If anyone today suggested that hey, wouldn't it be kinda okay if most people couldn't read, as long as the others made sure they select the best books to read to them from...? they'd be laughed out of any group of people. Most people on the planet older than 10 would see through that. It took us so long to get here, but damnit, here we are.

I don't see how computers are different, other than currently being mostly pushed and therefore being held hostage by motives of greed, consumerism and distraction, and our own shallow desire for instant gratification. But those motives are like clouds in the wind, in the way they are manifested they're rather a zit that grew in an unclean spot, than a "law of nature"... while computation and communication are hard facts that will not go anywhere ever, until the very end of the universe, or at least the end of life in it.

Whoever obstructed literacy in history is now dust and their motives forgotten, whatever temporary advantage over others it gained them they lost - but literacy remains, and the gratitude to those who teached others with patience and creativity will never waver or diminish. Again, I don't see how computers are different. Not everybody is Shakespeare, and not everybody has to be Carmack, but that doesn't mean to just leave it to the "experts".

Kicking out the ladder under you and being the middleman for what you found in the tree is a game old as dirt, and I think one nice step to help improving the physical world would be to stop repeating its worst mistakes in the "virtual" one.

/end rant.. no, wait:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -- Robert Heinlein