If you care about ideas, read this

Before you skip quickly to another blog or back to Facebook or Tweet your latest update, please read this. This column published in Sunday's News & Observer analyzes the impact of today's digital communications, which are increasingly demanding shorter, more frequent and more "seamless" contacts. Unfortunately, as author Neal Gabler observes, quick is not conducive to serious, and he worries that "ideas" — the thing that distinguishes civilization, knowledge and intellect — are being left in the dust of the digital world. I addressed this same issue last month.

Gabler cites Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death," one of my favorite books, which warns of the impact of a television-centric society. Television, Postman says, endangers conversation and turns people into zombies, or at least couch potatoes. The medium is particularly hazardous for young children, he warns. Written language is the catalyst to learning and the glue that holds together society. Postman worried that as written communication loses ground to spoken or visual communication, hard-fought civilizing advances will be endangered.

Now, after Postman's death, Gabler sees a new threat to human intelligence — the character-limited and ubiquitous text message in whatever form. Texting or its successors have replaced television in jeopardizing serious conversation, intelligent communication and, yes, ideas. Says Gabler: "To the extent that ideas matter, we are no longer amusing ourselves to death. We are texting ourselves to death."

It's a long column, but it's well worth reading.