The End of Literacy? Don't Stop Reading by Howard Gardner explores how today's technology has affected our society's literacy. It is an informative piece of writing describing how literacy has changed over time, and will continue to evolve because technology is continuously changing. I believe that Gardner, a Professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education, targeted adults (College and above) with his article because they are the one's that will be living and using the future technologies to come. Also, you can tell that he did not intend this for the youth because he used sophisticated language in order to express his opinions.
I do not believe that Gardner is blaming technology for today's downfall in literacy, but accepting the fact that literacy is constantly evolving. In pre-historic times Cavemen drew pictures of animals on the wall as a form of communication. In the past 150 years the "telegraph, telephone, movies, radio, television, the digital computer, the World Wide Web-has introduced its own peculiar mix or written, spoken and graphical languages." This technology makes it very easy to receive information and communicate with others which are reasons why very few people today read books as a source of entertainment, as past generations had. The author clearly has put much time and research into this article because his facts are very well supported. I believe he did a very good job of convincing his audience, and I agree with him also. Literacy has been constantly changing forever, why should it come to a halt now?
Your example about the evolution of technology is in my opinion correct. Every year we grow more and more reliant on technology and steer away from more traditional hobbies such as reading, thus fore affecting our literacy rates. From what I took out of this entry that was for the most part what you were trying to imply.
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