The Civilization of Illiteracy Part 4

Yes, America is illiterate to the extent that it const.i.tuted itself as an alternative to the world based on the underlying structures of literacy. The new pragmatic framework that the USA embodies does not automatically free it from the seductive embrace of the civilization it negates, and the current angst over the state of literacy is a manifestation of this. As an embodiment of the civilization of illiteracy, America demonstrates how several literacies can work together by complementing each other. Such a pragmatics succeeds or fails on its own terms. Whenever the implicit founding principles of adaptation, openness, exploration and validation of new models, and pragmatically based inst.i.tutions are pursued, the result is the expected efficiency. Sometimes, the price people seem to pay for it is very high-unemployment, dislocation, retrenchment, a loss of a sense of permanency that humans long for. The price includes the ability or willingness to consider all aspects involved in a situation-political, environmental, social, legal, religious. These aspects transcend the tangible and necessitate taking the broad view, which literate civilization allowed for, over the specialized, narrowly focused, short- sighted, parochial view. Other times, it looks as though there are no alternatives.

But in the long run, no one would really want to go back to the way things were 200 years ago.

Book two

From Signs to Language

Languages are very different. So are literacies. The differences go well beyond how words sound, how alphabets differ, how letters are put together, or how sentences are structured in the various languages used around the world. In some languages, fine distinctions of color, shape, gender, numbers, and aspects of nature are made while more general statements are difficult to articulate. Anthropologists noted that in some of the Eskimo languages many words could be identified for what we call (using one word) snow and for activities involving it; in Arabic, many names are given to camel; in Mexico, different names qualify ceramic pottery according to function, not form: jarro for drinking, jarra for pouring, olla for cooking beans, cazuela for cooking stews. The j.a.panese and Chinese distinguish among different kinds of rice: still in the paddy, long- grained, shucked, kernels. George Lakoff mentions the Dyirbal language of Australia where the category balan includes fire, dangerous things, women, birds, and animals such as platypus, bandicoot, and echidna.

In other languages, the effort to categorize reveals a.s.sociations surprising to individuals whose own life experiences are not reflected in the language they observe. The questioning att.i.tude in the Talmud (a book of interpretations of the Hebrew Torah) is based on 20 terms qualifying different kinds of questions.

Shuzan is calculation based on the use of the abacus. Hissan, hiding the j.a.panese word hitsu that stands for the brush used for writing, is calculation based on the use of Arabic numerals.

To be in command of a language such as Chinese (to be literate in Chinese) is different from being literate in English, and even more different from being literate in various tribal languages. These examples suggest that the practical experience through which language is const.i.tuted belongs to the broad pragmatic context.

There is no such thing as an abstract language. Among particular languages there are great differences in vocabulary, syntax, and grammar, as well as in the idiosyncratic aspects implicit in them, reflective of the experience of their const.i.tution.

Despite such differences-some very deep-language is the common denominator of the species h.o.m.o Sapiens, and an important const.i.tutive element of the dynamics of the species. We are our language. Those who state that language follows life consider only one side of the coin. Life is also formed in practical experiences of language const.i.tution. The influence goes both ways, but human existence is in the end dependent upon the pragmatic framework within which individuals project their own biological structure in the practical act through which they identify themselves

Changes in the dynamics of language can be traced in what makes language necessary (biologically, socially, culturally), what causes different kinds of language use, and what brought about change. Necessity and agents of change are not the same, although sometimes it is quite difficult to distinguish between them. Changed working habits and new life styles are, as much as the appropriate language characterizing them, symptomatically connected to the pragmatic framework of our continuous self-const.i.tution. We still have ten fingers-a structural reality of the human body projected into the decimal system-but the dominant number system today is probably binary. This observation regards the simplistic notion that words are coined when new instances make them desirable, and disappear when no longer required. In fact, many times words and other means of expression const.i.tute new instances of life or work, and thus do not follow life, but define possible life paths.

There are several sources from which knowledge about language const.i.tution and its subsequent evolution can be derived: historic evidence, anthropological research, cognitive modeling, cultural evaluation, linguistics, and archaeology. Here is a quote from one of the better (though not uncontroversial) books on the subject: Language "enabled man to achieve a form of social organization whose range and complexity was different in kind from that of animals: whereas the social organization of animals was mainly instinctive and genetically transmitted, that of man was largely learned and transmitted verbally through the cultural heritage," (cf. Jack Goody and Ian Watt, The Consequence of Literacy). The general idea pertaining to the social implications of language is restrictive but acceptable.

What is not at all explained here is how language comes into existence, and why instinctive and genetically transmitted organization (of animals) would not suffice, or even be tantamount to the verbally transmitted organization of human beings. As a matter of fact, language, as perceived in the text cited and elsewhere in literature, becomes merely a storing device, not a formative instrument, a working tool of sorts, even a tool for making other tools and for evaluating them.

Languages have to be understood in a much broader perspective.

Like humans, languages have an evolution in time. What came before language can be identified. What remains after a certain language disappears (and we know of some that have disappeared) are elements as important as the language itself for our better understanding of what makes language necessary. The disappearance of a language also helps us realize how the life of a language takes place through the life of those who made it initially possible, afterwards necessary, and finally replaced it with means more appropriate to their practical life and to their ever-changing condition. Research into pre-linguistic time (I refer to anthropological, archaeological, and genetic research) has focused on items people used in primitive forms of work. It convincingly suggests that before a relatively stable and repet.i.tive structure was in place, people used sounds, gestures, and body expressions (face, hands, legs) pretty much the way infants do. The human lineage, in its const.i.tutive phases, left behind a wealth of testimony to patterns of action and, later, to behavioral codes that result in some sense of cohesion.

Distant forebears developed patterns in obtaining food and adapting to changes affecting the availability of food and shelter.

Before words, tools probably embodied both potential action and communication. Many scholars believe that tools are not possible without, or before, words. They claim that cognitive processes leading to the manufacture of tools, and to the tool-making human being (h.o.m.o Faber), are based on language. In the opinion of these scholars, tools extend the arm, and thus embody a level of generality not accessible otherwise than through language. It might well be that nature-based "notation" (footprints, bite marks, and the stone chips that some researchers believe were the actual tools) preceded language. Such notation was more in extension of the biological reality of the human being, and corresponded to a cognitive state, as well as to a scale of existence, preparing for the emergence of language.

Research on emerging writing systems (the work of Scribner and Cole, for instance, and moreover the work of Harald Haarmann, who considers the origins of writing in the notations found at Vinca, in the Balkans, near present-day Belgrade) has allowed us to understand how patterns of sounds and gestures became graphic representations; and how, once writing was established, new human experiences, at a larger scale of work, became possible.

Finally, the lesson drawn from dying languages (Rosch's studies of Dyirbal, reported by Lakoff) is a lesson in the foundation of such languages and their demise. What we learn from these is less about grammar and phonetics and more about a type of human experience. We also acquire information regarding the supporting biological structure of those involved in it, the role of the scale of humankind, and how this scale changes due to a mult.i.tude of conjectures.

The differentiation introduced above among pre-language notations, emerging languages, emerging systems of writing, and dying languages is simultaneously a differentiation of kinds and types of human expression, interaction, and interpretation of everything humans use to acknowledge their reality in the world they live in. Drawing attention to oneself or to others does not require language. Sounds suffice; gestures can add to the intended signal. In every sound and in every gesture, humans project themselves in some way. Individuality is preserved through a sound's pitch, timbre, volume, and duration; a gesture can be slow or rapid, timid or aggressive, or a mixture of these characteristics. Once the same sound, or the same gesture, or the same sequence of sounds and gestures is used to point to the same thing, this stabilized expression becomes what can be defined, in retrospect, as a sign.

Semeion revisited

Interest in various sign systems used by humans reaches well back to ancient times. But it was only after renewed interest in semiotics-the discipline dealing with signs (semeion is the Greek word for sign)-that researchers from various other disciplines started looking at signs and their use by humans. The reason for this is to be found in the fast growth of expression and communication based on means other than natural language.

Interaction between humans and increasingly complex machines also prompted a great deal of this interest.

Language-oral and written-is probably the most complex system of signs that researchers are aware of. Although the word language comprises experiences in other sign systems, it is by no means their synthesis. Before the practical experience of language, humans const.i.tuted themselves in experiences of simpler means of expression and communication: sounds, rhythms, gestures, drawings, ritualized movement, and all kinds of marks. The process can be seen as one of progressive projection of the individual onto the environment of existence. The sign I of one's own individuality-as distinct from other I's with whom interaction took place through compet.i.tion, cooperation, or hostility-is most likely the first one can conjure. It must be simultaneous with the sign of the other, since I can be defined only in relation to something different, i.e., to the other. In the world of the different, some ent.i.ties were dangerous or threatening, others accommodating, others cooperating. These qualifiers could not be simply translated into identifiers. They were actually projections of the subject as it perceived and understood, or misunderstood, the environment.

To support my thesis about the pragmatic nature of language and literacy, a short account of the pre-verbal stage needs to be attempted here. Very many scholars have tried to discover the origin of language. It is a subject as fascinating as the origins of the universe and the origin of life itself. My interest is rather in the area of the nature of language, the origin being an implicit theme, and the circ.u.mstances of its origination. I have already referred to what are loosely called tools and to behavioral codes (s.e.xual, or relating to shelter, food-gathering, etc.). There is historic evidence that can be considered for such an account, and there are quite a number of facts related to conditions of living (changes in climate, extinction of some animals and plants, etc.) that affect this stage. The remaining information is comprised of inferences based on how beings similar to what we believe human beings once were const.i.tuted their signs as an expression of their ident.i.ty.

These signs reflected the outside world, but moreover expressed awareness of the world made possible by the human's own biological condition.

The very first sentence of the once famous Port-Royal Grammar unequivocally considers speaking as an explanation of our thoughts by signs invented for this particular purpose. The same text makes thinking independent of words or any kind of signs. I take the position that the transition from nature to culture, i.e., from reactions caused by natural stimuli to reflections and awareness, is marked by both continuity and discontinuity.

The continuous aspect refers to the biological structure projected into the universe of interactions with similar or dissimilar ent.i.ties. The discontinuity results from biological changes in brain size, vertical posture, functions of the hands.

The pre- verbal (or pre-discursive) is immediate by its very nature. The discursive, which makes possible the manifest thought (one among many kinds) is mediated by the signs of language. Closeness to the natural environment is definitive of this stage. Although I am rather suspicious of claims made by contemporary advocates of the psychedelic, in particular McKenna, I can see how everything affecting the biological potential of the being (in this case psilocybin, influencing vision and group behavior) deserves at least consideration when we approach the subject of language.

Signs, through which pre-verbal human beings projected their reality in the context of their existence, expressed through their energy and plasticity what humans were. Signs captured what was perceived as alike in others, objects or beings, and likeness became the shared part of signs. This was a time of direct interaction and immediateness, a time of action and reaction. Everything delayed or unexpected const.i.tuted the realm of the unknown, of mystery. The scale of life was reduced. All events were of limited steps and limited duration. Interacting individuals const.i.tuted themselves as signs of presence, that is, of a shared s.p.a.ce and time. Signs could thus refer to here and now as immediate instantiations of duration, proximity, interval, etc., but long before the notions of s.p.a.ce and time were formed. Once distinctions were projected in the experience of signs, the absent or the coming could be suggested, and the dynamics of repet.i.tive events could be expressed. It was only after this self- expression took place that a representational function became possible: a high-pitched cry not just for pain, but also for danger that might cause pain; an arm raised not only as an indication of firm presence, but also of requested attention; a color applied on the skin not only as an expression of pleasure in using a fruit or a plant, but also of antic.i.p.ated similar pleasures-an instruction to be mimetically followed, to be imitated.

Being part of the expressed, the individuals projecting themselves in the expression also projected a certain experience related to the limited world they lived in. Signs standing for a.s.sociations of events (clouds with rain, noise of hooves with animals, bubbles on a lake's surface with fish) were probably as much representations of those sequences as an expression of const.i.tuted experience shared with others living in the same environment. Sharing experience beyond the here and now, in other words, transition from direct and unreflected to indirect and reflected interaction, is the next cognitive step. It took place once shared signs were a.s.sociated with shared common experiences and with rules of generating new signs that could report on new, similar, or dissimilar experiences. Each sign is a biological witness to the process in which it was const.i.tuted and of the scale of the experience. A whisper addresses one other person, maybe two, very close to each other. A shout corresponds to a different scale. Accordingly, each sign is its shorthand history and a bridge from the natural to the cultural.

Sequences, such as successions of sounds or verbal utterances, or configurations of signs, such as drawings, testify to a higher cognitive level. Relations between sequences or configurations of signs and the practical experience in which they are const.i.tuted are less intuitive. To derive from the understanding of such sign relations some practical rules of significance to those sharing a sign system was an experience in human interaction. Later in time, the immediate experiential component is present only indirectly in language. The const.i.tution of the language is the result of the change of focus from signs to relations among them. Grammar, in its most primitive condition, was not about how signs are put together (syntax), nor of how signs represent something (semantics), but of the circ.u.mstances determining new signs to be const.i.tuted in a manner preserving their experiential quality-the pragmatics.

Consequently, language was const.i.tuted as an intermediary between stabilized experience (repet.i.tive patterns of work and interaction) and future (patterns broken). Signs still preserved the concreteness of the event that triggered their const.i.tution.

In the use of language, the human being abandoned a great deal of individual projection. Language's degree of generality became far higher than that of its components (signs themselves), or of any other signs. But even at the level of language, the characteristic function of this sign system was the const.i.tution of practical experiences, not the representation of means for sharing categories of experiences. In each sign, and more so in each language, the biological and the artificial collide. When the biological element dominates, sign experiences take place as reactions. When the cultural dominates, the sign or language experience becomes an interpretation, i.e., a continuation of the semiotic experience. Interpretation of any kind corresponds to the never-ending differentiation from the biological and is representative of the const.i.tution of culture. Under the name culture as used above, we understand human nature and its objectification in products, organizations, ideas, att.i.tudes, values, artifacts.

The practical experience of sign const.i.tution-from the use of branches, rocks, and fur to the most primitive etchings (on stone, bone, and wood), from the use of sounds and gestures to articulated language-contributed to successive changes in ongoing activity (hunting, seeking shelter, collaborative efforts), as well as to changes in humans themselves. In the universe of rich detail in which humans affirmed their ident.i.ty through fighting for resources and creatively finding alternatives, information did not change, but the awareness of the practical implications of details increased. Each observation made in the appropriation of knowledge through its use in work triggered possible patterns of interaction.

Once signs were const.i.tuted, sharing in the experience became possible. Genetic transmission of information was relatively slow. It dominated the initial phases during which the species introduced its own patterns within the patterns of the natural environment. Semiotic transmission of information, in particular through language, is much faster than genetic inheritance but cannot replace it. Human life is attested at roughly 2.5 million years ago, incipient language use roughly 200,000 years ago.

Agriculture as a patterned experience emerged no more than 19,000 years ago, and writing less than 5,000 years ago (although some researchers estimate 10,000 years). The shorter and shorter cycles characteristic of self-const.i.tution correspond to the involvement of means other than genetic in the process of change.

What today we call mental skills are the result of a rather compressed process. Compare the time it took until motor skills involved in hunting, gathering, and foraging were perfected to the extent they were before they started to degenerate, relatively speaking, as we notice in our days.

The first record is a whip

Signs can be recorded-quite a few were recorded in and on various materials- and so can language, as we all know. But language did not start out as a written system. The African Ishango Bone predates a writing system by some thousands of years; the quipus of the Inca culture are a sui generis record of people, animals, and goods previous to writing. China and j.a.pan, as well as India, have similar pre-writing forms of keeping records.

The polygenetic emergence of writing is, in itself, significant in several ways. For one, it introduced another mediating element disa.s.sociated from a particular speaker. Second, it const.i.tuted a level of generality higher than that of the verbal expression that was independent of time and s.p.a.ce, or of other forms of record keeping. Third, everything projected into signs, and from signs into articulated language, partic.i.p.ated in the formation of meaning as the result of the understanding of language through its use. Only at that moment did language gain a semantic and syntactic dimension (as we call them in today's terminology).

Formally, if the issue of literacy and the const.i.tution of languages are connected, then this connection started with written languages. Nevertheless, events preceding written language give us the perspective of what made writing necessary, and why some cultures never developed a written language.

Although referring to a different time-frame (thousands of years ago), this could help us comprehend why writing and reading need not dominate life and work today and in the future. Or at least it could help clarify the relation among human beings, their language, and their existence. After all, this is what we want to understand from the vantage point of today's world. We take the word for granted, wondering whether there was a stage of the wordless human being (about which we can only infer indirectly).

But once the word was established, with the advent of the means for recording it, it affected not only the future, but also the perception of the past.

Conquering the past, the word gives legitimacy to explanations that presume it. Thus it implies some carrying device, i.e., a system of notation as a built-in memory and as a mechanism for a.s.sociations, permutations, and subst.i.tutions. But if such a system is accepted, the origins of writing and reading are pushed back so far in time that the disjunction of literate-illiterate becomes a structural characteristic of the species at one of the periods of its self-definition. Obviously expanded far in time and seen in such a broad perspective, this notation (comprising images, the Ishango Bone, quipus, the Vinca figurines, etc.) contradicts the logocratic model of language.

Mono- and polysyllabic elements of speech, embodying audible sequences of sounds (and appropriate breathing patterns that insert pauses and maintain a mechanism for synchronization), together with natural mnemonic devices (such as pebbles, knots on branches, shapes of stones, etc.) are pre-word components of pre-languages. They all correspond to the stage of direct interaction. They pertain to such a small scale of human activity that time and s.p.a.ce can be sequenced in extension of the patterns of nature (day-night, very close-less close, etc.).

This juncture in the self-definition of the species occurred when the transition, from selected natural marks to marking, and later to stable patterns of sounds, eventually leading to words, took place. This was an impressive change that introduced a linear relation in a realm that was one of randomness or even chaos. If catastrophes occurred (as many anthropologists indicate), i.e., changes of scale outside the linear to which human beings were not adapted, they resulted in the disappearance of entire populations, or in ma.s.sive displacements. Rooted in experiences belonging to what we would call natural phenomena, this change resulted in rudimentary elements of a language. New patterns of interaction were also developed: naming (by a.s.sociation, as in clans bearing names of animals), ordering and counting (at the beginning by pairing the counted objects, one by one, with other objects), recording regularities (of weather, sky configurations, biological cycles) as these affected the outcome of practical activities.

Scale and threshold

Already mentioned in previous pages, the concept of scale is an important parameter in human development. At this point, it is useful to elaborate on the notion since I consider scale to be critical in explaining major transitions in human pragmatics.

The progression from pre-word to notation, and in our days from literacy to illiteracy is paralleled by the progression of scale. Numbers as such-how many people in a given area, how many people interacting in a particular practical experience, the longevity of people under given circ.u.mstances, the mortality rate, family size-are almost meaningless. Only when relations among numbers and circ.u.mstances can be established is some meaningful inference possible. Scale is the expression of relations.

A crude scale of life and death is remote from underlying adaptive strategies as these are embodied in practical experiences of self-const.i.tution. Knowledge regarding biological mechanisms, such as knowledge of health or disease, supports efforts to derive models for various circ.u.mstances of life, as humans project their biological reality into the reality of interactions with the outside world. We know, for instance, that when the scale of human activity progressed to include domesticated animals, some animal diseases affecting human life and work were transmitted to humans. Domestication of animals, a very early practical experience, brought humans closer to them for longer times, thus facilitating what is called a change of host for agents of such diseases. The common cold seems to have been acquired from horses, influenza from pigs, smallpox from cattle. We also know that over time, infectious diseases affect populations that are both relatively large and stationary. The examples usually given are yellow fever or malaria and measles (the latter probably also transported from swine, where the disease is caused by the larva of the tapeworm from which the word measles is derived). Sometimes the inference is made from information on groups that until recently were, or still are, involved in practical experiences similar to those of remote stages in human history, as are the tribes of the Amazon rain forest. Isolated hunter- gatherers and populations that still forage (the !Kung San, Hadza, Pygmies) replay adaptive strategies that otherwise would be beyond our understanding.

Statistical data derived from observations help improve models based only on our knowledge about biological mechanisms.

The notion of scale involves these considerations insofar as it tells us that life expectancy in different pragmatic frameworks varies drastically. The less than 30-year life expectancy (a.s.sociated with high infant mortality, diseases, and dangers in the natural environment) explains the relatively stationary population of hunter-gatherers. Orders of magnitude of 20 years higher were achieved in what are called settled modes of life existing before the rise of cities (occurring at different times in Asia Minor, North Africa, the Far East, South America, and Europe). The praxis of agriculture resulted in diversified resources and is connected to the dynamics of a lower death rate, a higher birth rate, and changes in anatomy (e.g., increased height).

The hypotheses advanced by modern researchers of ancestral language families concerning the relation between their diffusion over large territories and the expanding agricultural populations is of special interest here. The so-called Neolithic Revolution brought about food production in some communities of people as opposed to reliance on searching, finding, catching or trapping (as with foragers and hunters). As conditions favored an increase in population, the nature of the relations among individuals and groups of individuals changed due to force of number. Groups broke away from the main tribe in order to acquire a living environment with less compet.i.tion for resources.

Alternatively, pragmatic requirements led to situations in which the number of people in a given area increased. With this increase, the nature of their relations became more complex.

What is of interest here is the direction of change and the interplay of the many variables involved in it. Definitely, one wants to know how scale and changes in practical experiences are related. Does a discovery or invention predate a change in scale, or is the new scale a result of it or of several related phenomena? Polygenetic explanations point to the many variables that affect developments as complex as those leading to discoveries of human practical experiences that result in increased populations and diversified pragmatic interactions.

The major families of languages are a.s.sociated, as archaeological and linguistic data prove, with places where the new pragmatic context of agriculture was established. One well doc.u.mented example is that of two areas in China: the Yellow River Basin, where foxtail millet is doc.u.mented, and the Yangtzi River Basin, where rice was domesticated. The Austronesian languages spread from these areas over thousands of miles beyond. We have here an interesting correlation, even if only summarily ill.u.s.trated, between the nature of human experience, the scale that makes it possible, and the spread of language.

Similar research bears evidence from the area called New Guinea, where cultivation of taro tubers is identified with speakers of the Papuan languages, covering large areas of territory as they searched for suitable land and encountered the opposition of foragers.

Natural abilities (such as yelling, throwing, running, plucking, breaking, bending) dominated a humankind const.i.tuted in groups and communities of reduced scale. Abilities other than natural, such as planting, cooking, herding, singing, and using tools, emerge consciously, in knowledge of the cause, when the change of scale in population and effort required efficiency levels relative to the community, impossible to achieve at the natural level. Such abilities developed very quickly. They led to the diversified means generated in practical experiences involving elements of planning (as rudimentary as it was at its beginning), reductionist strategies of survival and well-being (break a bigger problem into smaller parts, what will become the divide-and-conquer strategy), and coalition building. These involved acts of subst.i.tution, insertion, and omission, and continued with combinations of these at progressively higher levels. At a certain scale of human activity, the experience of work and the cognitive experience of storing information pertinent to work differentiated.

Do structural changes bring about a new scale, or does scale effect structural changes? The process is complex in the sense that the underlying structure of human activity is adapted to exigencies of survival fine tuned to the many factors influencing both individual and communal experiences. That scale and underlying structure are not independent results from the fact that possibilities as well as needs are reflected in scale. More individuals, with complementary skills, have a better chance to succeed in practical endeavors of increased complexity. Their needs increase, too, since these individuals bring into the experience not only their person, but also commitments outside the experience. The underlying structure embodies elements characteristic of the human endowment-itself bound to change as the individual is challenged by new circ.u.mstances of life-and elements characteristic of the nature of human relations, affecting and being affected by scale. Dynamic tensions between scale and the elements defining the underlying structure lead to changes in the pragmatic framework. Language development is just one example of such changes. Articulated speech emerged in the context of initial agricultural praxis as an extension of communication means used in hunting and food gathering. Notation and more advanced tools emerged at a later juncture. Crafts resulted from practical experiences made possible by such tools as work started to become specialized. Writing was made possible by the cognitive experiences of notation and reading (no matter how primitive the reading was). Writing emerged as practical human const.i.tution extended to trade, to beyond the here-and-now and beyond co-presence. The underlying structure of literacy was well suited to the sequentiality characteristic of practical experiences, expression of dependencies, and deterministic processes.

As already stated, successive forms of communication came about when the scale of interaction among humans expanded from one to several to many. Literacy corresponded to a qualitatively different moment. If language can be a.s.sociated with the human scale characteristic of the transition from hunting and foraging for food to producing it by means of agriculture, literacy can be a.s.sociated with the next level of human interconditioning-production of means of production. One can use here the metaphor of critical ma.s.s or threshold, not to overwrite scale, but to define a value, a level of complexity, or a new attractor (as this is called in chaos theory). Critical ma.s.s defines a lower threshold-until this value, interaction was still optimally carried out by means such as referential signs, representations based on likeness, or by speech. At the lower threshold, individuals and the groups they belong to can still identify themselves coherently. But a certain instability is noticeable: the same signs do not express similar or equivalent experiences. In this respect, critical ma.s.s refers to number or amount (of people, resources they share, interactions they are involved in, etc.) and to quality (differences in the result of the effort of self-const.i.tution). Former means are rendered inadequate by practical experiences of a different nature. New strategies for dealing with inadequacies result from the experience itself, as the optimization of the sign systems involved (signals, speech, notation, writing) result from the same. Notation became necessary when the information to be stored (inventories, myths, genealogies) became more than what oral transmission could efficiently handle. Critical ma.s.s explains why some cultures never developed literacy, as well as why a dominant literacy proves inadequate in our days.

Signs and tools