In Leisure Theory in the Information Age by Wes Cooper and Reflections on Recreation, Park, and Leisure Studies by Daniel L. Dustin and Thomas L. Goodale, the authors raise two very important issues about the growth and impact of an increasingly symbolically constructed culture. This new culture has developed due to information technology and these changes in our culture have created a more narrowly specialized type of education for professional careers which is increasingly taught electronically. In turn, these changes in education have undermined the traditional community of scholars concerned with values and contributing to the public good.

As Cooper describes it, our work and leisure has increasingly taken the form of symbolic manipulation rather than manipulating the physical environment, so that more and more we and our environments are increasingly becoming symbolic constructs. This increasingly symbolization of our society has affected both work and leisure, so that whether one is at work or involved in recreational activities, one is more and more not interacting with the physical world as with a symbolically-created virtual world.

» Read more: The Rise of a Symbolic Culture and Online Education in the Information Age