Daniel

“For example, the hand-held telephone with internet connections allows us to speak easily with people far beyond the distance we can cross by shouting or waving flags or sending smoke signals. But when the use of such telephones shuts down communication with people three feet away from us, then we are talking about a tool whose use—if we do not learn to restrain ourselves—damages the very faculty that it is supposed to assist. It has become a suicide machine. Or if a student’s laptop computer prevents him from acquiring the patience and the mental silence necessary to read a good book, then it is weakening the very faculty for which, presumably, it was adopted in the first place. It too becomes a suicide machine. It will not matter that the computer can place before the student’s eyes many thousands of books he could otherwise never open. He will lack the mental habits to read them.”
― Anthony Esolen, Nostalgia: Going Home in a Homeless World