ABSTRACT
Print changes human minds by training our brains to do new things (Kean 2014). It gives rise to new practices and changes old ones. It does not so much destroy earlier practices
as transform them and change their place in the larger ecology of human meaning making. We still have poetry, handwriting, and memory, but they have been changed by print and their place in the ecology of meaning-making and knowledge-building practices has changed, as well. Homer’s poetry did not play the same role in society that Robert Frost’s did. Homer’s memory was vastly better than mine, but he had access to far less knowledge than I do. Digital media, too, will not replace literacy but will change the ecology of reading and writing practices.
