Voices from within the academy are now raising the alarm about the decline of literacy under the relentless assault of totalized digital immersion—finally catching up to what CounterVortex blogger and ranter Bill Weinberg has been saying for years (although sneering denialism about the problem remains fashionable). Worldwide, the humanities are being abandoned in favor of STEM, while social media overtakes “legacy media” as a source of “news”—or (as is more often the case) sinister propaganda. In Episode 333 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill takes stock of this grave and still under-appreciated threat to the survival of democracy and humanity itself—and looks for signs of practical resistance.
Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.
Books discussed:
The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas G. Carr, Norton 2020
Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge from Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic by Simon Winchester, Harper Collins 2023
The Reticular Society by Ian Alan Paul, PM Press 2026
Production by Chris Rywalt
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Image: Earth First! Newswire
Erratum re. SHITPHONE
The NYC Luddite Club acronym SHITPHONE stands for “Scathing Hatred of Information Technology and Passionate Hemorrhaging of our Neoliberal Experience” (contrary to our slightly incorrect rendering in the podcast). We still contend a more logical wording would be “Scathing Hatred of Information Technology and Profuse Hemorrhaging of our Neuronal Experience.”