Archive for Quotables

From a Jack Shafer article in Slate on the future of newspapers in the face of the blogging phenomenon:

"Michael Kinsley made me laugh a decade ago when he argued against Web populists replacing professional writers, saying that when he goes to a restaurant, he wants the chef to cook his entree, not the guy sitting at the next table. I'm not laughing anymore: When there are millions of aspiring chefs in the room willing to make your dinner for free, a least a hundred of them are likely to deal a good meal."

Andrew Sullivan, a commentator on world affairs and culture, recently wrote a column (the full text of which you can read on his popular blog, www.andrewsullivan.com) about the breakdown of a sense of community caused in part by portable MP3 players and other media. It ends this way:

"It's hard to give up, though, isn't it? Not so long ago, I was on a trip and realized I had left my iPod behind. Panic. But then something else. I noticed the rhthyms of others again, the sound of the airplane, the opinions of the cabby, the small social cues that had been obscured before. I noticed how others related to each other. And I felt just a little bit connected again. And a little more aware. Try it. There's a world out there. And it has a soundtrack all its own."

Education has always been a favorite subject for commentators who may or may not have a great deal of actual knowledge about the field. So the pundits might do well to remember the advice of famed journalist Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965), who once said, "Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar."

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

Alvin Toffler