I stumbled across Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds--for Better and Worse on Amazon. It makes the not-unreasonable case that computers in the classroom and in the home do more damage to children's education than it does good, but according to some it is more than a little too strident in tone. No particular desire to read the book, but I found this review interesting and something to file away for a future post on how book-reading is given a pass for many of the same things that are supposed to be demonstrative of the trouble presented by other media.

Also, over and over computers are blamed for not only preventing learning, but physically damaging our children. For example, in Chapter 4 "Computers and Our Children's Health" she bemoans the physical damage computers do to our children, while longing for the good old days of book-learning. However, couldn't the same arguments be made that reading books physically damages our children? Our bodies and minds have evolved to make us efficient hunters-gatherers. In nature, we focus most of our sight and energy to distant objects, hunting with an intense focus to any subtle sounds, smells, and sights that might show food or an enemy. However, with the introduction of reading and books children spend time alone (social deprivation) in quiet (deafness) artificially lighted rooms (blindness) huddled over (weakness) a book crammed against their faces. That is why so many children have poor vision, bad hearing, and are fat and weak.