“The Great Conversation” (The Classic Essay for The Great Books by Robert Hutchins) Editor’s note: Robert Maynard Hutchins’s book-length essay The Great Conversation was written for the first edition of Great Books of the Western World, published by Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1952.
It has been praised for its eloquence even by critics of Britannica’s Great Books program. The complete essay has been out of print for many years, but today Britannica publishes a lengthy excerpt of it with the current, second edition of the Great Books. Speed reading apps may kill comprehension. A few months back, there was a lot of buzz about a new display technology that promised to greatly increase people's reading speeds.
The approach, typified by Spritz, displays words one at a time in a single location. As the speed cranks up and words fly by, the service seems to live up to its promise: each word registers as it briefly flits across the screen. Spelling is more than a niche irritation, it is the gateway to life.