This is CBSI on the world.

I'm John Batchel.

Gergeri Copley, my colleague is here to explain himself in a new essay at Defense

and Foreign Affairs about the scale of the population now, counting on rumor and superstition and guesswork and make-believe rather than

the facts, the facts as printed in documents and online. In other words, the literate population

is in retreat.

The rumor mongers are in advance.

Is that how we are?

Did we want to get to this place that the digital universe would mean that people read less?

Don't read it all.

That describes, according to Gregory's essay, the world before 1450, illiteracy and

superstition. Gregory, have we always been this way and we're now acknowledging it, or did it come

about in these last years since the end of the Cold War? Good evening to you. Good evening, John.

Well, it's certainly come about, well, not even since the end of the Cold War, but since the end of the Cold War. Good evening to you. Good evening, John. Well, it's certainly come about, well, not even since the end of the Cold War, but since the mid-20th century

and the like. What we saw was that the world began to change in about 1450, which is when

Johann Gutenberg, from Mines in Germany, created a system of movable type

and a printing press that went with it

so that you could print and disseminate large numbers

of pamphlets, leaflets,

ultimately newspapers and the like,

which didn't rely on scribes to draw them.

So that meant that you had a massively increased rate of learning and literacy

...