Optimism or Pessimism?

Miller writes, towards the end of “Reading In Slow Motion” that “writers have long dreamed of being able to bring the other arts into the reading
experience. Now that a laptop is a movie studio, a recording company, an atelier, a
study, a publisher, and a global distributor all wrapped up in one, the act of composition
has changed. How well prepared will our students be, as readers and as writers, to
confront such a world? How well prepared are we?”

While I would love to solicit answers to those final questions, it’s fairly clear from the preceding portions of the article that Miller asks them rhetorically. It seems obvious that we haven’t been adequately prepared for our increasing hyper-connection. Last week cinnabarhorse expressed his misgivings about the effects our internet habits have on us/him. I suppose then, the question I ask is it desirable to embrace the world Miller depicts, or are we better off as tech-skeptics, like Carr or cinnabarhorse? I’m not asking who makes the better case, but who you agree with, on a gut level. What do you feel about this increased, constant access to information, to one another?