Part 7 (1/2)

The unnatural, nonlinguistic use of language is studied by psychologists, cognitive scientists, and artificial intelligence researchers in order to understand the relation between language and intelligence This need to touch upon the biological aspects of the practical experiences of speaking, writing, or reading results fro takes place while the biological endowment is projected into the experience Important work on what are called split- brain patients-persons who, in order to suppress epileptic attack, have had the connection between the two brain hemispheres severed-shows that even the neat distinction left-right (the left part of the brain is in charge of language) is problematic Researchers learned that in each practical experience, our biological endowment is at work and at the sa a word like laugh in the right field of vision results in the patients' laughing, although in principle they could not have processed the word

When asked, such patients explain their laughter through unrelated causes If a text says ”Scratch yourself,” they actually scratch the itches Virtual reality practical experiences take full advantage of these and other clinical observations The absent in a virtual reality environment is very often as important as the present On the back channels of virtual reality interactions, not only words but also data describing hu with the hand) can be transmitted Once fed back, such data becomes part of the virtual world, adapted to the condition of the person experiencing it This is why interest in cognitive characteristics of oral coes or of the present-reround information is more readily available in oral cos people refer to are closer to the words they use Human co-presence in conversation results in the possibility to read and translate the word under the guise of a willingness by others to shohat a particular word stands for In orality, the experience pertinent to the word is shared in its entirety This is possible because the appropriate world of experience (corresponding to the circular scale of hue is in a one-to-one relation hat it describes In some ways, the parent-child relation is representative of this stage in the childhood of humankind

In the new orality of the civilization of illiteracy the saies of segmentation The speaker and listener(s) share space and tiree, future

And even if the subject is not related to that particular space and moment, it already sets a reference ue are people sharing a similar experience of self-constitution Far is far froo froe The acquisition of far, long (or short) tio is in itself the result of practical circu We now take these distinctions for granted, surprised when children ask for tighter qualifiers, or when corams fail because we input information with insufficient levels of distinction

The realization of the frame of time and space occurred quite late in the development of the species, within the scale of linear relationshi+ps, and only as a result of repeated practical experiences, of sequences constituting patterns Once the reference ed and integrated in new experiences, it becauage and to assume much more than as actually said In today's world, space and time are constituted in experiences affected by the experience of relativity Accordingly, the orality of the civilization of illiteracy is not a return to primitive orality, but to a referential structure that helps us better cope with dynamism

The space and time of virtual experiences are an exae, but not fro of time and space

Computers able to perform in the space of human assuical possibilities

assumptions

assun systems A mark left can make sense if it is noticed The assumption of perception is the ed

assu are different from those of orality They entail the structural characteristics of the practical experiences in which the people writing constitute their identity Literate assue, are extensions of linear, sequential experience in all its constitutive parts They are evinced in vocabulary, but even ran system is that of its built-in assumptions Illiteracy is an experience outside the realm defined by the means and es the need and justification of literate assumptions, especially in view of the way these affect human effectiveness

The very fine qualifiers of tied only slowly, and initially at a rather coarse level of distinction Despite the treress made, even today our experience with time and space requires some of the repertory of the primitive human

Movees in facial expression and skin color (eg, blushi+ng), breathing rhyth, intonation, pause, lilt)-all account for the resurrection in dialogue of an experience uistic eleful in new practical experiences, such as interaction with and inside virtual environuistic elements consciously used in primitive communities, or unconsciously present, still escape our scrutiny Their presence in coenetic endowe, although they are connected to its experience Exa Blacks in A Chinese and japanese We can only conjecture, froe strand (proto-languages), or in the ue of humankind (proto-world), that words were used in conjunction with non-linguistic entities Whether a e existed is a different issue The hypothesis mimics the notion of a couage of this possible ancestor More important, however, is the observation that the practical experience of language constitution does not eliuistic in nature Moreover, the para-linguistic, even when language becon of literacy, renificant for the effectiveness of human activity The civilization of illiteracy does not necessarily dig for para-linguistic remnants of previous practical endeavors

It rather constitutes a fraical iven frans acquire a strong conventional nature The way the word for I evolved (quite differently than equivalents in different languages of the world: ich, je, yo, eu, n, ani, etc), and the ords relating to two evolved (hands, legs, eyes, ears, parents), and so forth, gives useful leads It seee as a uistic signs (clasp, repetition, pointing) Soory and the distinction between one and two are related

The Aranda population (in Australia) combine the words for one and two in order to handle their arithins with two We take this for granted, but in so, japanese), there is no distinction between singular and plural In addition, it should be pointed out here that the sanals) can be understood in different ways in different cultures Bulgarians shake their head up and down to signal no, and side to side to signal yes

Within a given culture, each sign eventually becoround coh which it was constituted In direct speech, we either know each other, or shall know each other to a certain extent, represented by the curees of ”I know that you know that I know that you know,” defining a vague notion of knowledge within aan experience in reciprocal understanding, if indeed the conversation takes place in a non-linear, vague context iues in the wired world, as well as in transactional situations of extreme speed (stock market transactions, space research,to such experiences, impossible to pursue within the limitations of literacy

Orality can be assertive (declarative), interrogative, and i) In the course of tie and its assumptions in oral form, humans acquired an intrinsic interactive quality This resulted froe in their condition: on the natural level there was the limited interactivity of action-reaction In the human realm, the nucleus action-reaction led to subsequent sequences through which areas of conitive realization that speaking to so of e say, as well as the acknowledged responsibility to explain, whenever this understanding is incomplete or partial, is also a source of our interactive bent

Questions take over part of the role played by the ns and add to the interactive quality of dialogue, so long as there is a coround is assumed by everyone who maintains the idea of literacy-how else to establish it?-as a necessity, but understood in round as e, phonetics, cultural heritage Granted that a coe is a necessary condition for coe is not simultaneously a sufficient condition, or at least not one of most efficient, for communication Interactivity, as it evolved beyond the literate model, is based on the probability, and indeed necessity, to transcend the coe expectation and replace it with variable common codes, such as those we establish in the experience of multimedia or in networked interactions Even the ability to interact with our own representation as an avatar in the Internet world beco borders of literate identity

Taking literacy for granted

In preceding paragraphs, we exae, for a conversation to make sense

Scale is another factor The scale that defines a dialogue is very different froe acquisition and use included, take place Scale by itself is not enough to define either dialogue or the e- based, practical activity through which people ascertain their biological endowment and their human characteristics There is sufficient proof that at the early stage of hueneous tasks Within such a fraues were instances of cooperation and confirressively gain a heuristic di ical odds of eneralized language-supported practical activity involved not only heuristics (”If it seeht/If it h the intere experiences Thus an integrative influence is exercised This influence increases when orality is progressively superseded by the lieneralized literacy of industrial society reflected the need for unified and centralized frameworks of practical experience, within a scale optie In our days, people constitute theh experiences more diverse than ever These experiences are shorter and relatively partial They are only an instant in theprocess they mentation, even within the assue, which nations are supposed to be, and paradoxically survive their own predicted end In reality, this coe ceases to exist, or at least to function as it used to What exists are provisional co up a framework for activities impossible to carry out as a practical experience defined by literacy Within each of these fast-changing coes, of limited duration and scope, come into existence Sub-literacies accompany their lives Experience as such opens avenues to more orality, under post-literate conditions-in particular, conditions of increased efficiency matics of literacy The e-direct verbal communication-becomes a test case for what it really e, and not e assue accomplishes ritten or read by everyone

Instances of direct verbal co foreign countries, at work, shopping, at church, at a football stadiu inquiries, in social life) are also instances of taking for granted that others speak our own language Many researchers have attempted to evaluate the effectiveness of communication in these contexts Their observations are nevertheless not independent of the assunitive die does not realize how deep the understanding goes One exaiven is the terse instruction on a bottle of shampoo: ”Lather Rinse Repeat” It is not a matter of an individual's ability to read the instructions in order to kno to proceed One does not need to be literate, e in order to use shampoo, if one is familiar with the purpose and use of shampoo (ie, with the act) Indeed, for most individuals, the word shampoo on a bottle suffices for them to use it correctly with no written instructions at all Icons or hieroglyphics can convey the instructions just as well, even better, than literacy can These, by the way, are colobal economy It is even doubtful that most individuals read the instructions because they are fa shampoo, but, deeper still, the conventions behind the words of the instructions Should an adult, even a literate adult, as totally unfa his or her hair be presented with a bottle of sha the hair with shampoo would have to be demonstrated and inculcated until it became part of that adult's self-constitutive repertory Such analyses of language only scrape the surface of how hue

Literacy forces certain assumptions upon us: Literate parents educate literate children A sense of community requires that its members share in the functionality of literacy Literate people couages Literacy ious faith People can participate in social life only if they are literate

Considering such assumptions, we should realize that the abstract concept of literacy, resulting froe automatically means a common experience, only maintains false hope Children of literate parents are not necessarily literate Chances are that they are already integrated in the illiterate structures of work and life to the saree children of illiterate parents are This is not a matter of individual choice, or of parental authority On the digital highway, on which a growing number of people define their coordinates, with the prevalent signtaking over any other identification, coe independent of location

Participation in such coations maintained by a set of reciprocal dependencies that involved spelling asto industrial production cycles

In all of today's coer do the steepest percentile fall in comparison to any other form of communication In this fraht for their own survival But the methods and ulation, control, self-preservation-is based have many times over proven inefficient These statements do not re, to which literacy is more closely connected than it is to speech To discover what e e frees itself frooal we pursue

To understand understanding