Daniel at What To Fix wrote:

Intelligence is going down as fewer and fewer books are being read (news flash: the printed book industry is on the way out unless this trend stops),

Decius wrote:

This sort of hand wringing about books is the clarion call of the luddite. Books are a media. There are other media.

Daniel seems not to have read (ha!) the latest NEA report:

For the first time in more than 25 years, American adults are reading more literature, according to a new study by the National Endowment for the Arts. Reading on the Rise documents a definitive increase in rates and numbers of American adults who read literature, with the biggest increases among young adults, ages 18-24. This new growth reverses two decades of downward trends cited previously in NEA reports such as Reading at Risk and To Read or Not To Read.

"At a time of immense cultural pessimism, the NEA is pleased to announce some important good news. Literary reading (*) has risen in the U.S. for the first time in a quarter century," said NEA Chairman Dana Gioia. "This dramatic turnaround shows that the many programs now focused on reading, including our own Big Read, are working. Cultural decline is not inevitable."

(*)

"Such reading may have involved print or online materials—the questions place no strictures on the format."

Also:

"In this report, 'literary' reading refers to the reading of any novels, short stories, poems, or plays in print or online."

Regarding Daniel's urgent plea to save the "printed book industry", a bit of history is in order. From 1876, here's the NYT:

The telephone, by bringing music and ministries into every home, will empty the concert-halls and the churches.

And from 1877, also in the NYT:

The telephone was justly regarded as an ingenious invention when it was first brought before the public, but it is destined to be entirely eclipsed by the new invention of the phonograph.

RE: Technology is Heroin - What To Fix