The Age of Books and the Age of Brainrot

Derek Thompson’s recent essay, “The End of Thinking,” states the problem faced by educators today more clearly than anything else I’ve read.

“I am much more concerned about the decline of today’s thinking people than I am about the rise of tomorrow’s thinking machines,” Thompson writes.

He continues:

The demise of writing matters, because writing is not a second thing that happens after thinking. The act of writing is an act of thinking. This is as true for professionals as it is for students… If reading and writing “rewired” the logic engine of the human brain, the decline of reading and writing are unwiring our cognitive superpower at the very moment that a greater machine appears to be on the horizon.

Thompson’s piece is an essay in the original sense of the term, developing an ide…