I glance over at my quartet of Billy bookcases, stuffed with books two layers deep, to the last white and birch centimetre of space. Full of books of all descriptions -- vampire fiction, classical literature, textbooks, my prized personal collection of books about digital culture. But in and among that admittedly eclectic company are a half dozen or so bumblebee coloured "For Dummies" books, on topics ranging from "NFL for Dummies" to "Pilates for Dummies" to "GRE for Dummies".
Apparently I'm not alone in having a few of these on my shelves. There are over 150 million copies in circulation...and growing. It would seem that there are over 1000 titles in this series, and most titles are written in a little under three months. The New York Times claims that "The list of Dummies topics is like a parallel history of contemporary consciousness". Perhaps it is.
Should this worry me? What does this say about the human race?
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1 comment:
What it says is that we are a race interested in learning, and perhaps also that we are willing to leap at something we knew very little about beforehand. Hence we start 'as dummies'.
As much as I like the notion, I doubt there were "Ye olde booke of Knight-ness for Dummieyes" back in the days of old ;)
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