Salon has an excellent interview with Dennis Baron, the author of A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution (and has a really interesting blog frontpage). His thesis is that the current panic about the Internet making us dumber or destroying the ability to write etc., etc., is a repeat of similar panics caused by previous innovations in content production and not to be worried about. From Plato (on writing) to Wodehouse (who certainly didn’t like dictaphones), pundits have obsessed about how the technology shapes our thinking and foreseen doom and gloom unless we return to the good old days, be it with handwriting or correction fluid.

This, too, shall pass.

(via BoingBoing)