I keep hearing that “we’re living in a post-literate society,” but worldwide literacy levels are the highest in human history. When people say “post-literate society” what they mean is “a North American and/or Western European society in which a smaller percentage of people read books than in 1950, and are correspondingly more likely to get information and entertainment from audio, video, and short-form texts.” Which is a big thing! But it has nothing to do with literacy. I would bet that the average today reads and writes more words-per-day than the average person in 1975 did, when TV ruled the media world. Almost every “post-literacy” jeremiad or lamentation acknowledges this — e.g. — but their authors can’t be bothered to come up with a phrase that accurately describes what they are rightly concerned about.