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We all know that new media are changing our lives. If there was ever a reason to hone our 18th-century skills, this is it.

Steven Pinker's recent piece in The New York Times drives this point home. "Yes, the constant arrival of information packets can be distracting or addictive, especially to people with attention deficit disorder," he writes:

But distraction is not a new phenomenon. The solution is not to bemoan technology but to develop strategies of self-control, as we do with every other temptation in life. Turn off e-mail or Twitter when you work, put away your Blackberry at dinner time, ask your spouse to call you to bed at a designated hour.

And to encourage intellectual depth, don’t rail at PowerPoint or Google. It’s not as if habits of deep reflection, thorough research and rigorous reasoning ever came naturally to people. They must be acquired in special institutions, which we call universities, and maintained with constant upkeep, which we call analysis, criticism and debate. They are not granted by propping a heavy encyclopedia on your lap, nor are they taken away by efficient access to information on the Internet.

The new media have caught on for a reason. Knowledge is increasing exponentially; human brainpower and waking hours are not. Fortunately, the Internet and information technologies are helping us manage, search and retrieve our collective intellectual output at different scales, from Twitter and previews to e-books and online encyclopedias. Far from making us stupid, these technologies are the only things that will keep us smart.

Pinker's main goal is to talk the doom sayers down from their cliffs. New media won't make us as stupid and erratic as gnats, he insists. For centuries, each new form of media has sparked a new lament that humanity is going to h*ll in a handbasket. History should teach us to lighten up, Pinker suggests.

I'm a bit more prone to the hysteria than Pinker is. At no other time has distraction been as easy as it is now. The same devices that can bring us all the world's knowledge can also bring us Grand Theft Auto, reruns of The Bachelor, a flood of smut, and a whole lot of other cultural refuse. They make it all too easy to bail out of the hard work it takes to follow a complex line of thought from beginning to end.

But Pinker makes a strong defense of schools' role in teaching 18th-century skills. (Or 16th century, if you prefer. There are many centuries to choose from). Schools (and not just universities, as he seems to suggest) should instill "habits of deep reflection, thorough research and rigorous reasoning." They should foster "analysis, criticism and debate."

These have always been important habits, but now they may be more important than ever. Smart phones won't create smart people. We still need schools for that.

So perhaps champions of new media should add a pretty conservative argument to their arsenal: We need to bring new media into schools so that students learn to use it for good rather than for evil. We need to help students use these media as powerful new aids to reflection, research and reason.

And we need to help them see knowledge as something to own and cherish rather than merely as a collection of moderately interesting landmarks that flit past them as they cruise the information superhighway.

Hat tip: Tom Hoffman.