Johnson suggests that new media are less effective [than a novel, as an example] at conveying 'a full-fledged worldview' - that these media lend themselves to soundbites. I wonder if my generation and younger are capable of forming a deep and rounded worldview of our own accord, much less be able to interpret one from a great work of literature?

In the last few pages, he touches briefly on morals and ethics. He points out that violent crime statistics have decreased in the last decade - while new media may not be morally edifying, broadly speaking it doesn't seem to be stimulating violence. He opines that media are less influental than family or peer groups, and I think I agree with him. However, does that mean we should be any more accepting of tasteless, pointless, vacant content? While it's fine that new media might be flexing some cognitive muscles, couldn't we be raising the cultural bar at the same time?

and...

Just finished the 'For Further Reading' section. This is, for me, the most interesting section of the book for a couple of reasons. He introduces some books I've never heard of that I'm going to run out and buy, like A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History by Manuel de Landa, The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore, and The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan [I suspect this one will fill in some ideas about the domestication of plants that are coming up in Guns, Germs and Steel, on my reading list.] He also outlines the srtuctural model beneath his argument: 5 conciliatory levels of experience that build on each other, in the spirit of E.O. Wilson - though his model is not as rich as Ken Wilbur's quadrants, and I'm not sure his sequence of levels is logically correct, in the sense that the higher levels embrace the lower. I need to think it through for a few days.