[marcus_holmes]

Define "power".

If you try reading an 18th Century novel, the prose is really difficult to parse. They were used to reading much more difficult text than we are.

But we deal with more information in a day than they would in a year. It's hard to say because we can't experiment, but I would expect they would be completely confused by the sheer amount of shit that we deal with routinely.

The next generation are just further along on this curve.

And as TFA says, they're perfectly intelligent and cogent when talking, it's just their literacy that is changing.

It's an adaptation to changing circumstances, not a reduction in thinking ability.

[JumpCrisscross]

> If you try reading an 18th Century novel, the prose is really difficult to parse. They were used to reading much more difficult text than we are

They just wrote and spoke differently. You’ll notice a lot of 18th-century writing is also shorter; most of the Federalist Papers fit on one page, and serialised novels were about to become a thing.

[marcus_holmes]

I'm more thinking of Dickens - long run-on sentences, with points stretched over sub clauses. It's difficult, and that was the pulp of the day.

[GeoAtreides]

>long run-on sentences

long yes, run-on no.