Top all-time · #14298
James Marriott
Personal blog · jmarriott.substack.comculturewriting
James Marriott writes Cultural Capital, a personal blog at jmarriott.substack.com about culture and writing. Since 2025, 5 different Hacker News readers have linked it 5 times, most often “The dawn of the post-literate society – and the end of civilisation”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-23, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this Substack for posts on falling literacy and reading comprehension, including a claim that current college students read worse than 1850s children, and on short-form content's effects on the brain.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A newsletter about ideas, literature and the arts.
Most-linked posts?
- The dawn of the post-literate society – and the end of civilisation3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-09-20
What Hacker News says?
I don't think things get better over time. What is your source for that? Here's an article (with sources) describing a massive down trend in literacy and reading comprehension: https://jmarriott.substack.com/p/the-dawn-of-the-post-litera... In short, college students nowdays have lower reading comprehension than young children in the 1850s. That is not what I would call progress. Speaking personally, I believe I wou…
Comment linking /p/the-dawn-of-the-post-literate-society-aa1
on “LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger”Submitted The dawn of the post-literate society – and the end of civilisation as a story · 87 points
HN discussionI find increasingly that written words from organisations are trending worse. I tend to find particular authors are sometimes good writers, and sometimes they have blogs which I have always liked but more & more lately. My national/public broadcaster/media organisation(ABC, Australia) is doubling down on fiddling all day with headlines & the pictures. They’re not selling any product, they don’t need to follow commer…
Comment linking /archive
on “The evolution of effective altruism”Submitted A YouTube Education as a story · 1 points
HN discussionhttps://jmarriott.substack.com/p/the-dawn-of-the-post-litera... This is a great writeup on why short-form content is overall a net negative for us with a human brain.
Comment linking /p/the-dawn-of-the-post-literate-society-aa1
on “Loops is a federated, open-source TikTok”