For a reality check today, take the state of science, which demands high levels of brainwork and is measured by clear benchmarks of discovery. These days scientists are never far from their e-mail, rarely touch paper and cannot lecture without PowerPoint. If electronic media were hazardous to intelligence, the quality of science would be plummeting. Yet discoveries are multiplying like fruit flies, and progress is dizzying. Other activities in the life of the mind, like philosophy, history and cultural criticism, are likewise flourishing, as anyone who has lost a morning of work to the Web site Arts & Letters Daily can attest.

I confess that I cringe when I hear others pine away about the days before the web (or Twitter or XBox or Facebook) when students were not as distracted and so much more adept at deep critical thinking exercises.

It’s likely that those memories are more mythology than reality.

What we can say with certainty is that these are amazing times for science, literature, art, history, math, classics and human communication.

So, let’s be great role models and model critical thinking in this Diamond Age we find ourselves entering.