Techno advances are making us stupid

“Never before were so many good books so freely available. Every child should be encouraged to use them.”

Your editorial (Irish Examiner, October 7) should be vigorously roared from the mountain-tops. The value of reading a wide variety of hard-copy books should never be underestimated, not only in terms of expanding vocabulary and building imagination, but also as a way of grounding the mind and brain against the flurry and flux of cyber-immediacy and vapid-virtualism á la the all-pervasive internet.

The shallowing out of concentration via relentless screen-watch activity is malignant as far as solid, long-term learning is concerned. Flitting, quickfire scanning and scrolling around a screen is an unhealthy way to in learn. It’s a glancing accummulation of awareness rather than indepth learning.

The pressure from IT corporations flogging their newest ‘app’ for this and ‘app’ for that leaves the young bereft of curiosity and the wherewithal to work things out on their own. The ever-burgeoning dependence on techno-aids and ‘cyberised’ knowledge systems offers little in comparison to the discipline of book-reading.

No-one has sat down and bemoaned the perpetually appearing IT ‘innovations’. Yet the entrepreneurial techno-geeks foist their wares wide, creating a perceived ‘need’ which eventuates into a dependency. Bring back the books and banish the screens .. proportionately at least.

Jim Cosgrove

Chapel Street

Lismore

Co Waterford