The New Dark Ages: The Death of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society

James Marriott, a columnist at The Times of London and author of The New Dark Ages, traces the cognitive and social consequences of the shift away from reading. He describes how preliterate societies thought and handled truth, and how literacy and the printing press made democracy and modern science possible. He then argues that television and smartphones are returning public discourse to an emotional, personality-driven mode. The conversation explores what that may mean for attention and the future of Western civilization.