Part 16 (1/2)
At the inception of writing, the tension between an iht appear froe close to the object, allowing into the language only objects that pictograms could represent- and a rather diverse, however very unfocused, oral language resulted in conflicts between the proponents of writing and the guardians of orality (as documented in ancient Greek philosophy) The written needed to be freed fro from a particular source of protein, or a particular food source It had to support ato ould become families, types, classes of objects, etc), and thus to support practical efforts to diversify the ways of survival and continuous growth in number The oral had to be ta could, and did, take place only through and in work, and in socially related interaction The practical effort to e from many practical experiences of survival into all kinds of artifacts (for ation, etc) testifies to this Phonetic writing, the develop, better i the oral expressive, and social characteristics, endowing the written with the hints that bring it close to speech, are supported in the phonetic systeraphs and what others call the de deserve their naes are both constitutive and representative of human experience
Undifferentiated labor is theocratic Its rules are imposed by the object of the practical experience Divided labor, while affecting the integrity of those beco only an instance of the work process, is participatory, in the sense that its results are related to the performance of each participant in the process Practical experience of language and experience of divided labor are intrinsically related and correspond to the pragmatic framework of this particular human scale Labor division and the association of very abstract phonetic entities to very concrete language instantiations of human experience are interdependent
The reale leading fro literacy to the civilization of illiteracy, I referred to the Malthusian principle (Population, when unchecked, increases geometrically, while food sources increase arithe is the heuristic nature of the huressive realization of the creative potential of the only known species that, in addition to enerates its own a-natural condition In the process of their self-constitution, hurowth beyond the circularity of ies The 19th century econo example of this characteristic: ”Both the jayhawk and the man eat chicken, but the more jayhawks, the fewer chickens, while the more men, the more chickens” (Just think about the Purdue chicken industry!) The formula is flawed
Humans also intervene in the jayhawk-chicken relation; the number of animals and birds in a certain area is affected by more elements than what eats what; and the population increase is less unless associated with patterns of human practical experiences Species frequently become extinct due to hue's characterization captured an important aspect of the human species, as it defined itself in the human scale that e's ties that followed the pattern of Malthus' law People were running out of timber, coal, and oil for lamps, just as we expect to run out of y and food sources, water, etc) Originators of ardless of the ti previous shortages, humans focused on alternatives, and made the to the use of coal, when the timber supply decreased in Britain in the 16th century, and this will be the case with the shortages , kerosene was extracted from the first oil wells (1859); more coal reserves were discovered; better y and made coal extraction more efficient; industry adapted other minerals; and the strict dependence on natural cycles and far and storage techniques
The pragmatic framework of current human praxis is based on the structural characteristics of this higher scale of humankind It affects the nature of huanization within erowth and resource availability shows that with language, writing and reading, and finally with literacy, and even e experience, a coherent framatic human action was put in place, and used to corowth and resources
Our time is in more than one way the expression of a se do, ie how the relation bete associate with engineering and language evolved, we evidence both continuity-in the form of successive replications-and discontinuity-in the new condition of the current engineering work Our reference can besystee of drawing thatpossible
Phoenician traders supplied materials to the Minoans The Minoan burial culture involved the burial of precious objects that embodied the experience of crafts These objects were old, tin, and lead In time, increased quantities of such metals were permanently removed from the market
Phoenicians, who supplied thesebetter tools to find and preprocess thein the process of compensation between perceived needs and available resources, and the fact that searches for new resources led to the disse and craftsmanshi+p should be understood within the dynamics of local economies
Up to which point such a co skills, is effective, and when it reached its cli the Industrial Revolution, is a question that can be put only in retrospect Is there a moment when the balance was tilted towards the ineering? If yes, we do not know this moment; we cannot identify it on historic charts But once the potential of literacy to support human practical experiences of self- constitution in a new pragmatic frameas exhausted, new means becaes that matic framework of the civilization of illiteracy necessary is the object of the entire book While engineering contributed to them, they are not the result of this important practical experience, but rather a cause of hoas and is affected by theushed forth through new languages, the language of design and engineering included, resulted in the awareness of oal
Mediation ofthe continuity of the argu the iument for the reality to which this book refers: the present First, a general thesis derived froe, as well as the eneral structure of human activity-direct work vs
mediated fores From a certain moment in human evolution, tools, as an extension of the human body and mind, are used, soh the intermediary of commands transmitted electronically, pneumatically, hydraulically, thermally, or in some other way, thea button, flipping a switch, punching a keyboard, triggering a relay-seen as steps preparing for entirely programmed activities-means to extend the sequence of mediations Between the hand or another body part and the processedthis process are introduced Accordingly, language, as related to work, religion, education, poetry, exchange in the e and new, lienerated and used for uage of design) is one of the the newly designed languages are established
But how is this related to the innate heuristic condition of the hu the change in the scale of huy, resulting fro interpretations of science, defines the path to higher levels of efficiency, and to the relative illiteracy of our time? The increase in population and the dynamics of diversification (more choices, more resources) at this new scale assume a different dimension It is irrelevant that resources of one type or another are exhausted in one econoland, and even the USA (rich in the majority of resources in demand) have exhausted whatever oil, copper, tin, diasten was available Due to , while the quantities and different types of food consumed per capita have increased substantially Faced with the challenge posed by the national, linear, sequential, dual, deterenerated the need for literacy, hulobality, non-linearity, configuration, ic, non-determination-and embody them in artifacts appropriate to this condition
The new scale necessitated creative work forat needs and availabilities frolobality in the japanese sushi+ restaurant in Provence or in the Midwest, in the McDonalds in Moscow or Beijing, inall over, nificance of the ter that we share in resources and creative uage, culture, nations, alliances, etc), as well as in high efficiency processing equiply side The world would even go to war (and has, again and again) to secure access to critical resources or to keep ly side that defines the effective pragmatics Nor does it define the circumstances of our continuous self-definition in this world of a new dynamics of survival needs and expectations above and beyond such needs
Where literacy no longer adequately supports creative work based on higher levels of efficiency, it is replaced by languages designed and adapted to mediation, or to work destined to compensate for an exhausted resource, or by her efficiency Hunting and fishi+ng re declined to the level at which people in a country like the USA no longer know that in the woods there are riculture, probably the longest standing form of practical experience, escapes sequentiality and linearity, and adds industrial dihly specialized, efficient activity We share resources and even y); in the globality of coy; and, last but not least, in the globality of the ain, it is not any recent discovery or trend that is the engine of change, frolobal, but the new circu effect is the altered individual
Freed froy that ensures levels of efficiency and security for which the living being is not well adapted to provide, many types of work are sie, of literacy in particular There is no need to teachsentences There is even less of a need toliteracy that is aard, inefficient, staious, political, ideological, etc) The new languages, whether interfaces between machines or between humans and machines, are of limited scope and duration In the dynaes are appropriately adapted to each other Our entire activity becomented, more distributed, more coic of efficiency, not to dualistic inferences or truth or falsehood
Soainst the ists arn of dae inflicted on the environ faht read here a vote for technocracy, for the advocates of lirowth, the optimists of despair, or the ists, etc) None is the case Rather, I sub and action that takes into account the co coht us to, on si out the terrain of the descriptive level of the relation between language and work under current pragmatic circuful detail, the position so far described
Literacy and Education
Education and literacy are intimately related One seems impossible without the other Nevertheless, there was education before the written word And there is education that does not rely on literacy, or at least not exclusively With this in ht literacy into education, and on the consequences of their reciprocal relation
The state of education, like the state ofcharacteristics of literacy-based practical experiences, is far from what is expected Literacy carried the ideal of permanency into the practical experience of education
In a physical world perceived as limented, captive to sequentiality, characterized by periodic changes and interco peroal and theit It defined a representative, limited set of choices Within this structure, education is the practical experience of stabilizing optimal uage Education based on literacy is adapted to the dynae within the reduced scale of humankind that eventually led to the formation of nations-entities of relative self-sufficiency Within national boundaries, population growth, resources, and choices could be kept in balance
Purposely simplified, this view allows us to understand that education evolved froes-direct transeneration to another-to religion-based educational structures Filtered by a set of religious premises, education later opened abeyond the immediate and the proximity of life, and evolved, not painlessly, into schools and universities concerned with knowledge and scholarshi+p This, too, was a long process, with eneralized system of educationhave in place, and which reflects the separation of church and state Liberal education and all the values attached to it are the foundational eneral education
If you give soive someone an alphabet, every problem becoood paraphrase, applicable to the discussions on education in our day It should not folloever, that with the World Wide Web, education is only a s of classes and the accidentalof educational needs to network availabilities In our world of change and discontinuity, the end of literacy, along with the end of education based on literacy, is not a symptom, but a necessary development, beyond on-line studies This conclusion, which ital disseht seeuments to folloill justify the conclusion
”Know the best”