Andrew Sullivan points me to an interesting article in the New Atlantis about the book divide.
in 2008 reported that the Web is now the primary source of reading
material for low-income high school students in Detroit. And yet, the
study notes, “only reading novels on a regular basis outside of school
is shown to have a positive relationship to academic achievement.”
Despite
the attention once paid to the so-called digital divide, the real gap
isn’t between households with computers and households without them; it
is the one developing between, on the one hand, households where
parents teach their children the old-fashioned skill of reading and
instill in them a love of books, and, on the other hand, households
where parents don’t. As Griswold and her colleagues suggested, it
remains an open question whether the new “reading class” will “have
both power and prestige associated with an increasingly rare form of
cultural capital,” or whether the pursuit of reading will become merely
“an increasingly arcane hobby.”
Yes, the digital divide is nearly over. And that's a good thing. Everyone should have access to technology. But the issue is not longer who has access and who doesn't. The sticking point is what people are using technology for. If you come to the Internet with certain skills, skills that are no doubt built up by years of novels and good non-fiction, you are able to access different things on the Internet Instead of using Facebook to post videos of you getting loaded at parties and sucking face with your boyfriend, you'll use it to post your resume on Monster, engage in deep debates about politics, and watch political debates on YouTube.
The Internet is a huge amusement park. Those that have the skills get the E tickets for the best rides; those who don't have the skills are stuck on the "It's a Small World" ride over and over again.
Apt. 11d 