Wordsworth: Pictures make us dumb.

ILLUSTRATED BOOKS AND NEWSPAPERS - by William Wordsworth

DISCOURSE was deemed Man's noblest attribute,
And written words the glory of his hand;
Then followed Printing with enlarged command
For thought--dominion vast and absolute
For spreading truth, and making love expand.
Now prose and verse sunk into disrepute
Must lacquey a dumb Art that best can suit
The taste of this once-intellectual Land.
A backward movement surely have we here,
From manhood,--back to childhood; for the age--
Back towards caverned life's first rude career.
Avaunt this vile abuse of pictured page!
Must eyes be all in all, the tongue and ear
Nothing? Heaven keep us from a lower stage!

1846.

In the above poem, Wordsworth is lamenting the infantilism of illustrated newspapers. It is his opinion that the illustrated papers are the first steps towards driving us back into the caves. These illustrated newspapers can also be seen as the first steps towards our multimedia existence and also the beginnings of the information age. Wordsworth apparently felt that an overwhelming and endless influx of news from daily papers would cause extreme restlessness in humanity. In that opinion, he may have been right. However, this restlessness may be caused by many other things in our society and not just the daily influx of information. It makes me wonder what he would think of SL? Turning reality into a pictured pseudo reality? Would he find merit in this experience or be skeptical of it? Would he think it too was making us less intelligent? Why does the addition of the picture make us likened to cavemen?