But perhaps there is increased visual literacy? Obviously computer fluency. The longtime success of radio to MP3 players and cell phones suggests that the audio channel remains important. The pedagogical challenge is to make textual literacy compelling for audio/visual learners and those who are trained to skim a few lines, get the gist and move on -- necessary skills in the face of info overload, not to mention incessant advertising, which requires critical thinking to filter out? This is well trodden Postman territory for which the Net is only the latest pop culture/media/tech culprit. There have been a slate of recent articles, which I don't believe have shown up on AoIR, about information deficit and multitasking to the extent that concentration in general suffers. Not only is sustained reading difficult, but any task that requires doing or listening for a prolonged period of time is tough to sustain. The media spin on this one is that we're becoming an ADD society. We're losing permanence. Relationships are suffering, the environment isn't a serious concern, jobs are taken on a free-agent basis without consideration for long term corporate or customer outcomes, et al.