"Your Brain on Text"

Kit Wilson on the affects of abstraction and how we view the world

Reading the spring 2022 issue of The New Atlantis, I came across a fantastic essay by Kit Wilson entitled “Reading Ourselves to Death.” I’m always a sucker for a good Neil Postman reference, so I dove right in, and it didn’t disappoint.

Wilson opens with a thought experiment. You’re in a room with no access to the outside world. In the first version, you…