Beyond Literacy: Are Reading and Writing Doomed?
The very essence of what we do as librarians is toast!
Yes! Reading and writing ARE doomed.
Speculative. Literacy will be replaced in the way it replaced the oral culture. We are prisoners of literacy because we grew up in this culture.
Post-literacy is not a decline from literacy; it will be desirable and advantageous.
Why post literacy:
- Literacy is difficult to acquire and use effectively; it is also elitist.
- Human problems are increasingly complex.
- Humans are natural tool builders; we'll look for that next tool to give additional capability
- Neurological frontiers are very promising; interesting ideas to be developed about communication
- Machine intelligence is inevitable and desirable.
- The singularity is near
- the world on paper
- ABC: the Alphabetization of hte Popular mind
- Orality and literacy
magical vs rational
Steve Mann - Cyborg: world is completely mediated through the computer
Characteristics of post literacy:
- persistence
- active
- precision
- expressive
- community
- identity
Candidates for post literacy:
- Bio-computing / neural prosthetics (how can we read our thoughts)
- Unused capacity of the brain (telepathy: techlepathy (telepathy through technology, no need to use written language; spoken language is completely different matter)
- Hive mind / collective unconscious (borg: but must give up individuality)
- Drugs / cosmetic neurology (we encode knowledge physiologically; can we replicate these with drugs and nano-technology? take a pill to learn French?)
- Genetic memory (instinct)
- Post humans (will we live long enough to see this? )
Literacy is over. A profound new capability and capacity is coming with a very difficult transition (similar to transition from oral culture to literate culture).
Post literacy could be a product.
Danger: mind spam; neural hacking.
Can one jump form illiterate to post literate?
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