I’m reading Tyler Cowen’s book Create Your Own Economy and I’ll be posting thoughts and snippets as I go. Here’s Cowen on the new cultural literacy:
What cultural literacy means today is not whether you can “read” all the symbols in a Rubens painting but whether you can operate an iPhone and other web-related technologies. The iPhone, if used properly, can get you to website on Rubens as well. The question is not whether you know the classics but whether you are capable of assembling your own blend of cultural bits. When viewed in this light, today’s young people are very culturally literate and in fact they are very often the cultural leaders and creators. (pg. 59)
I’m only a few chapters in, but I’m greatly enjoying the book. And, of course, I can’t recommend Cowen’s blog, Marginal Revolution, highly enough.
beyond the times 