Writing in the 21st Century

Years ago, in Hollywood, someone once remarked that the amount of bad screenplay writing increased with the advent of the copy machine. The same claim was later made when word processing and screenwriting software came along.

The fact is there is a lot of bad writing that goes on in many arenas. Today much of the blame gets heaped on email, or texting, or technology, or just “kids today.” The real issues are more nuanced, more complex, and not quite as rigid as some might wish.

These are some of the conclusions of Harvard Professor Steven Pinker in his new book The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century.

My conversation with Steven Pinker:

Violence really is diminishing

The seemingly endless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, might make us believe we live in the most violent age ever. But Steven Pinker, Professor of Psychology at Harvard, explains that just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and continues to diminish, even in our modern times. In The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined he looks at human nature, psychology, and history to explain how this has happened.

My conversation with Steven Pinker:

Mind over message

For those that have read Matt Richtel's article and listened to our conversation below and are concerned that your brains are being rewired by your gadgets, here is Harvard psychology Professor Steven Pinker's answer in today's NY Times.