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Jeff Cunningham's avatar

I'm surprised there was no mention of Neil Postman's book "Amusing Ourselves to Death", which came out in 1985 as I recall, although I only just recently read it. He traces it back to the invention of telegraph and photography and their "unholy alliance" which technologically proceeded in the development of silent movies, radio, television, and - if he had lived long enough, I'm sure he would have included the Internet and smartphones. Because his basic principal of massive change in how we go about cognition in a written environment vs what we have now strikes me as the same as what you have been trying to quantify. It's worth reading just for the chapter on the development of television news alone.

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No Ones Oracle's avatar

Perhaps it starts

With a sacred fast

Where we ditch our screens

To go touch grass

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