Ok, Now I've Read Keller's Piece

I've read it, and I don't think he's consistent in what he's complaining about. On one hand there's the increased use of tools giving us more brain rotting leisure time. But this:

My father, who was trained in engineering at M.I.T. in the slide-rule era, often lamented the way the pocket calculator, for all its convenience, diminished my generation’s math skills

Is ridiculous. Tools like Matlab have advanced mathematical analysis far past what was achievable in the slide rule days. You know whose math skills suffer? People who never use math anyway. In the meantime they are coming up with incredible things in the arts because they don't have to waste time doing their taxes on a slide rule. The point is people who want to use these conveniences for an incredible, previously unachievable result far outweighs the negative effects of people who use the convenience for more leisure time. He uses the invention of the printing press as the first step in eliminating memorization:

Until the 15th century, people were taught to remember vast quantities of information. Feats of memory that would today qualify you as a freak — the ability to recite entire books — were not unheard of. Then along came the Mark Zuckerberg of his day, Johannes Gutenberg.

Then later he makes this point:

But my inner worrywart wonders whether the new technologies overtaking us may be eroding characteristics that are essentially human: our ability to reflect, our pursuit of meaning, genuine empathy, a sense of community connected by something deeper than snark or political affinity.

Shouldn't the whole Renaissance after the invention of the printing press thing disprove his point? The time when everyone was memorizing stuff and there was a lack of leisure time for arts and invention was called the Dark Ages. The time after the printing press was a great time for reflection and pursuit of meaning. I just verified it on Wikipedia!