Walter Jankowski Assignment 1C Summary and Response Section HB McGough September 18, 2013 E.B.

. Whites Comment Imagine a world where no one has the ability to read. Communication would be much harder especially on large scale. This is the type of world that E.B. White writes about that is shown in Convergences (page 60). Whites comment is about the future of writing decreasing and eventually going extinct. His claims are invalid due to the fact that reading is still as prevalent today as it was when he wrote the comment. This comment from White was from around 1940 and expressed what the world would be like if reading became extinct. White starts by telling how education is moving from paper based to technology based and how eventually reading could become extinct. If this did happen society would have to put such great value around anyone who could still read and pamper them to keep them around for as long as possible. The question is are we ready and how do we know. What would we do if this happened in the future? While this comment does hold some weight in todays society, I find it hard to see how this could possibly happen. Today there does seem to be trends of less written work but there still is a lot of writing today. He claims that there would be people who would have universities centered on them because of their ability to read while others cant. This clearly hasnt happened in the last seventy years and with the trends in education today it wont happen in the future. Based on how long ago this comment by White was written, I think it has already proven to be wrong. While we have moved away from paper based education in many ways we still rely heavily on books and hard copy works of writing. I do think that the comment had some validity though, due to how little I go to the library to do research, most students do their research on the computer. I think his comment wasnt meant to be taken completely literally but it does have some good applications in todays society.

Works Cited White, E.B. Comment. Convergences: Themes, Texts, and Images for Composition. Ed. Robert Atwan. Boston: Bedford/St.Martins, 2009. 60.