Part 2 (1/2)

A e coy developed around it The variation of the ned to the words literacy and illiteracy is syles from which they are examined Literacy, as someone said (I found this credited to both John Ashcroft, once governor of Missouri, and to Henry A Miller) has been a es in criteria for evaluating writing and writing skills as the pragh ti is probablyand reading are the preeneralized literacy can be construed only in connection to the invention ofthe 11th century in China, and the early 16th century in Western Europe), and even h-speed rotary press

Within theof what literacy connotes have coh the Book (Torah, Bible, Koran, Upanishads, Wu Ching), literacy means to be able to read and understand the book, and thus the world All practical rules presented in the Book constitute a frah literacy or oral tradition In the Middle Ages, to be literate e of divine revelation Parallel to the religious, or religion-oriented, perspective of literacy,constitute a fra and reading and other skills of co maps, tables, and symbols affect people's ability to participate in econoal-hos and social rules are encoded in order to ensure uniform social behavior

Scholars have looked at literacy fro so, they have foisted upon the understanding of literacy interpretations so diverse and so contradictory that to follow them is to enter a ers' lines was paraphrased as: ”We are all illiterate, only about different things” The formula deserves closer examination because it defines another characteristic of the context for understanding the relative illiteracy of our tiree of illiteracy is difficult to quantify, but the result is easy to notice Everything carried into the self-constitution of the individual as warrior, lover, athlete, fa replaced by illiterate means nobody expected that an individual who reads Tolstoy or Shakespeare will be a better cook, or devise better military plans, or even be a better lover

Nevertheless, the characteristics of literacy affected practically all prag upon them a unity and coherence we can only look back upon with nostalgia

Champions of sexual encounters, as ies and Olympic athletes are extremely efficient in their respective doe falls in the range of mediocrity and sub- mediocrity In this book I will examine many aspects of literacy pertinent to what is usually associated with it: the publications people write and read, communication at the individual and social levels, as well as many aspects of human activity that we do not necessarily consider in relation to literacy--but which nevertheless were influenced by the pragmatic framework that made literacy possible and necessary

With the evident dee Doubt that a coe exists is replaced by certitude that it does not A so-called third culture, in the opinion of the author who brought it to public attention, ”consists of rendering visible the deeper s of our lives” in ways different from those of literary intellectuals This is not CP Snow's third culture of scientists capable of co with non-scientific intellectuals, but the illiterate scientific discourse that brings fascinating notions into the es (albeit in a trivialized manner) This is why the relation between science and literacy, as well as between philosophy and literacy, will be examined with the intention to characterize the philosophy and science of the civilization of illiteracy

But are we really equipped with the e? Aren't we captive to language and literacy, and thus to the philosophic and scientific explanations based on them? We know that the systeocratic view adopted The testing of skills rated by score is to a great extent a measure of comprehension characteristic of the civilization of literacy The new prage and literacy, but also to ies, sounds, textures,this, we have to address the relation between a relatively static medium and dynamic media We should look into how literacy relates to the visual, in general, and, in particular, to the controversial reality of television, of interactiveand virtual reality These are all tasks of high order, requiring a broad perspective and an unbiased viewpoint

Most important is the comprehension of the structural i of the framework that led to literacy, and of the consequences that the new pragmatic framework of existence has on all aspects of our lives will help us understand how literacy influenced theion, fa up the notion of permanency, God disappears for quite a number of people Still, there are ious factions (atheist and neo-pagan included) than at any other tie life partners 28 ti their lifespan (if they ever constitute a fachildren with the same precision that they use to calculate the expected return on an invest the business of the nation, and is now judged on its economic achievements Presidents of states act as super-peddlers of major industries on whose survival eiving up the ideals anchored in literate discourse (eg, hu fuss when it coeht is difficult to define in respect to digital originals Through the literacybureaucratic ht about by the pragmatic framework of the civilization of illiteracy

Many more people than previous recordsthe required years of schooling-a e

Some people kno to read; even horite, but opt for scanning TV channels, playing ga the Internet Aliteracy is also part of the broader change in the status of literacy Decisions to forego reading and writing are decisions in favor of different eneration is eneration will be involved in high-efficiency practical experiences structurally similar to the interactive toy and far re The Internet shapes the choices of the new generation in terms of what they want to knohen, and for what purpose azines, and even more than radio or television does And even h its vast and expanding s, the Internet connects the individual to the globe, instead of only talking about globality Networking, at many levels and inexcludes everything that is not fast- paced and to the point

Can all these examples, part of the context of the discussion of literacy in our changing world, be interpreted as being in causal relation to the decline of literacy? That is, the less people are knowledgeable in reading and writing, or choose not to read or write, the less they believe in God or the an they want to be? The more often they divorce, the less they marry or have children? The more they want or accept a bureaucratic raames they play, thethis line of one-dimensional, linear, simplistic form of determinism A multiplicity of factors, and a multiplicity of layers need to be considered They are, however, rooted in the pragmatic framework of our continuous self- constitution It is exhibited through the dynamics of shorter and faster interactions It is e our identity It takes the appearance of availabilities, fragration, of increased her efficiency that a larger scale of human activity demands

To call attention to the multi-dimensionality of the process and to the many interdependencies, which we can finally uncover with the help of new technologies, is a first step To evince their non-linearity, reflecting thebethat can be seen as deterministic and what is probably non-deteru our discussion on humatics, it would be impossible to explain why, despite all the effort and money societies invest in education, and all the time allocated for education-sonitive processes pertinent to literacy, people wind up less literate, but, surprisingly, not at all less efficient Soue-the late Alan Bloom, a crusader for culture and literacy, indeed a brilliant writer of the epilogue of huia for it, already did-that without literacy, we are less effective as huues in the status of hus and of hues unavoidable

The wise fox

The world as it stands today, especially the industrialized world, is fundamentally different from the world of any yesteryear, the last decade and century, not to mention the past that seems more the time of story than of history Alan Bloom's position, embraced by many intellectuals, is rooted in the belief that people cannot be effective unless they build on the foundation of historically confirreat books But we are at a point of divergences with no noticeably privileged direction, but with many, h some want us to believe the contrary and are ready to offer their re (authority, books, soo, or of the s, back to nature); or fast forward to the utopia of technocracy, the infore, the service society, even virtual reality or artificial life

Humans are heuristic animals Our society is one of creativity and diversity, operating on a scale of human interaction to which we exponentially add new domains: outer space, whose diht years, and whose period of observation extends over lifeti the scale in the opposite direction of infinitesimal differentiations; the new continents of ned plants and anienetic codes, and virtual realities to experience new spaces, new ti, which at its current stage barely suggests things to come, can only be compared to the tiy exchanged through networks and focused on cooperative endeavors is part of what lies ahead as we experience exponential growth on digital networks and fast learning curves of efficient handling of their potential

The past corresponds to a pragmatic frameell adapted to the survival and development of humankind in the limited world of direct encounters or limited mediations In terms pertinent to a civilization built around the notion of literacy, the current lower levels of literacy can be seen as symptomatic of a crisis, or even a breakdown But what defines the new pragmatic context is the shi+ft from a literacy- centered model to one of multiple, interconnected, and interconditioned, distributed literacies It is well justified to repeat that soed, confused, even scared by the change, they call for a journey to the past: back to tradition, to discipline, to the ethics of our forefathers, to old-tirew out of it, to permanence, and hopefully to stability Even those holeheartedly espouse evolutionary and revolutionary models seem to have a problem when it comes to literacy All set to do aith authority, they have no qual the imperialism of the written word Otherwith a present so pro in its structural contradictions What we experience, fro sense of lessness, nourishes skeptical, if not fatalistic, visions The warning is out (again): We will end up destroying hu present accepts the challenge without caring about the iive up their desire to understand what happens, as long as thisHollywood thrives on this So do the industries of digital smoke- and-mirrors, always a step from fame, and not much farther from oblivion Addresses on the Internet fade as quickly as they are set up Thelinks of yesterday show up on the ful as their short- lived presence was Arguing with success is a sure recipe for failure Success deserves to be celebrated in its authentic fore the nature of huested in the labels technocracy, inforht capture some characteristics of today's world, but it is li This future fails to accommodate the development of human activity at the new scale in terrowth it has reached Within thisstructure the current set of dependencies a the many parts involved in human activity, and a stubborn deterministic view of simplistic inclination Unreflected celebration of technocracy as the sole agent of change must be treated with the same suspicion as its dey in human activity is indeed i and infor, and the new relation between productive activities and services To make sense of disparate data and from them form new productive endeavors is a formidable task

Science, in turn,theories and extremely refined models of the world

But after all is done and said, these are only particular aspects of a hly eneralized networking of rather loosely coordinated individual experiences define this condition

Within this framework, the connection between input (for instance, work) and output (what results) is of a different order of nitude tfrom that between the force applied on a lever and the outcoy necessary to accoines or electric, or pneumatic devices, no matter how efficient, and the result In addition, even the distinction between input and output becomes fuzzy The wearable computer provides interoperability and interconnectedness-an increase in a person's heart rate can be a result of an increase in physical exertion or cause for co the police station (if an accident takes place) It enetic code

The capacity for language and the ability to understand its various implications are only relatively interdependent, and thus only relatively open to scrutiny and understanding This statement, as personal as it sounds, and as nation than uncertainty, is crucial to the integrity of this entire enterprise Indeed, once within a language, one is bound to look at the world surrounding oneself froe as the medium for partial self-constitution and evaluation Participating in its dynamics affects what I am able to see and describe This affects also what I aer able to perceive, what escapes my perception, or even worse, filters it to the point that I see only ral part of the observed phenoical aspects ale is a projection of ourselves-as participants in the human experience, yet as distinct instantiations of that experience-we do not see the world so much as ourselves in relation to it, ourselves in establishi+ng our culture, and again ourselves in ta the universe around us

The fox in Saint-Exupry's The Little Prince says it s one tae industrial complexes where an ioods, and densely populated urban centers gravitating around factories, e characteristic of industrial society This ily different from the new reality of interconnected, yet decentralized, individual activities going well beyond telecoly efficient practical experiences of human self-constitution The co eleh its functions, such as calculation, word, i, it introduces many layers between individuals and the object of their actions The technology of interconnecting provides ies It also facilitates parallel ressive decentralization and interoperative possibilities All kinds of machines can be an address in this interconnected world Their operations can range fro Distributed work and cognitive functions pertinent to it afford practical experiences qualitatively different fro of tasks as we know it froe portions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as well as part of the European and North American continents, do not necessarily fit this description in detail Industrial activities still constitute the doh norated world, the Industrial Revolution has not yet reached thericulture have not yet been attained In view of the global nature of human life and activity today, I submit that despite the deep disparity in the econoions of the world, it is plausible to assume that centralized modes of production peculiar to industrial economies are not a necessary developlobal scale of huies different fromatic framework of industrial activity It is therefore probable that countries, and even subcontinents, not affected by the Industrial Revolution will not go through it Planners with an ecological bent even argue that developing countries should not take the path that led industrial nations to aug standard to the detri natural resources (A German Manifest, 1992)

Industrial production and the related social structures rely on literacy Edmund Carpenter forears and levers, the book became machine