Jason Hillenburg's Reviews > Intelligence in the Digital Age: How the Search for Something Larger May Be Imperiled

Lyn Lesch’s "Intelligence in the Digital Age: How the Search for Something Larger May Be Imperiled" is the fifth book from a renowned educator famed for founding and directing his own democratically ran school for children ages six to fourteen over the course of twelve years. Lesch garnered considerable attention for his efforts and has built on that reputation with writing examining how larger issues of consciousness dovetail into our customary views about education. In an increasingly technological age where traditional methods are falling by the wayside each year, Lesch’s voice offers an important counterpoint to the idea of conduction business as usual as well as an antidote to the conceit that technological advancement presents ready-made answers for how society should and can educate its young people. "Intelligence in the Digital Age" confronts such issues with unflinching clarity and intelligence.

Lesch claims in the book’s acknowledgements that the work’s subject matter doesn’t yet entirely exist in the modern world. Such a statement, much of the time, is outright puffery. Lesch, however, isn’t empty braggadocio. "Intelligence in the Digital Age" addresses head on, over eleven chapters, the disruptive effect the digital world today has wrought on learning and consciousness at a fundamental level. There is, perhaps, a tendency some readers will have to dismiss Lesch’s concerns as somewhat Luddite or alarmist in nature – that the deleterious effects on consciousness and learning are personal choices rather than unavoidable consequences of immersion in the digital landscape.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: www.lynlesch.com

Perhaps, to a certain extent, the latter is true. The former is not as Lesch readily admits the positives our Brave New World has opened for us. Lesch makes a strong argument though that, despite our best efforts, the very nature of the digital world has inescapable effects on the intellect that are cumulative and increasingly destructive. The vigorous forceful prose utilized to make this point is consistent throughout the book, even when he reorients his focus, and the well chosen research underpinning his arguments lends further strength to the book’s arguments. The neuro-scientific evidence he presents is not fly by night. It is the result of years of evidence based theorizing borne out through practice rather than ideas free floating through the intellectual ether.

AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-D...

He wraps his ideas about consciousness and the digital world together with increasing seamlessness as the book progresses cumulating in the final chapter about consciousness in cyberspace. These final thoughts offer readers an emphatic exclamation point for everything preceding it while still avoiding a strident note as Lesch manages through the ten earlier chapters. It is a testament to Lesch’s talents as a writer that he presents such a powerful document in far less than two hundred pages; it is a book where the author knew exactly what they wanted to say and how to phrase it. This level of confidence is one of the essential ingredients making "Intelligence in the Digital Age: How the Search for Something Larger May Be Imperiled" one of the more important books written and published about life and learning in the digital age.