[WaltPurvis]

The "point" the article is trying to make is that there is a decline in literacy so severe that it means "the end of civilization" -- a strong claim, to say the least, and one that demands rather stronger evidence than a 1-5% decline in various measures of literacy/thinking. (Granted, test scores are not the only evidence he has marshaled.)

[mallowfram]

It's simply the end of the the symbolic era's low meaning load. The sentence is dead. The metaphor. Whatever low-grade semantics we suffered under is coming to a close and a new form/format of meaning-units are needed.