The Civilization of Illiteracy Part 46

-. Real Presence: Is There Anything in What We Say?

London/Boston: Faber & Faber, 1989.

-. The End of Bookishness? in The Times Literary Supplement, July 8-14, 1988, p. 754.

Marshall McLuhan. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1962.

Ivan Illich. Deschooling Society. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.

Illich states bluntly: "Universal education through schooling is not feasible" (Introduction, p. ix).

Ivan Illich and Barry Sanders. The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1988.

Y. M. Lotman. Kul'tura kak Kollektvinji Intellekt i Problemy Iskusstuennovo Razuma (Culture as collective intellect and problems of artificial intelligence). Predvaritel'naya Publicacija, Moskva: Akademija Nauk SSSR (Nauchinyi Soviet po Kompleksnoi Problemi Kibernetika), 1977.

Jean Baudrillard. Simulations. Trans. Paul Foss, Paul Patton, Philip Beitchman. New York: Semiotext(e), 1983.

The Chasm Between Yesterday and Tomorrow

Hans Magnus Enzensberger. Mittelma und Wahn. Gesammelte Zerstreuungen. Frankfurt am Main: 1988.

Norbert Wiener. The Human Use of Human Beings. Cybernetics and Society. 1st ed. New York: Avon Books, 1967.

Wiener was very concerned with the consequences of human involvement with machines and the consequences of the unreflecting use of technology. "Once before in history the machine had impinged upon human culture with an effect of the greatest moment. This previous impact is known as the Industrial Revolution, and it concerned the machine purely as an alternative to human muscle" (p.185).

"It is fair to say, however, that except for a considerable number of isolated examples, this industrial revolution up to present [ca. 1950] has displaced man and beast as a source of power, without making any great impression on other human functions" (p. 209).

Wiener goes on to describe a new stage, what he calls the Second Industrial Revolution, dominated by computing machines driving all kinds of industrial processes. He notes: "Let us remember that the automatic machine, whatever we think of any feelings it may have or may not have, is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor" (p. 220).

"What can we expect of its economic and social consequences? In the first place, we can expect an abrupt and final cessation of the demand for the type of factory labor performing purely repet.i.tive tasks. In the long run, the deadly uninteresting nature of the repet.i.tive task may make this a good thing and the source of leisure necessary for a man's full cultural development. It may also produce cultural results as trivial and wasteful as the greater part of those so far obtained from the radio and the movies" (p. 219).

Nick Thimmesch, editor. Aliteracy. People Who Can Read but Won't.

Washington, DC: American Enterprise Inst.i.tute for Policy Research, 1983. Proceedings of a conference held on September 20, 1982 in Washington, DC.

According to William A. Baroody, Jr., President of the American Enterprise Inst.i.tute, the aliterate person scans magazines, reads headlines, "never reads novels or poetry for the pleasures they offer." He goes on to state that aliteracy is more dangerous because it "reflects a change in cultural values and a loss of skills" and "leads to knowing without understanding."

Marsha Levine, a partic.i.p.ant in the conference noted that although educators are concerned with universal literacy, many people read less or not at all: "A revolution in technology is having an impact on education...they [technological means]

increase the level of literacy, but they might undermine the practice of what they teach."

At the same conference, an anonymous partic.i.p.ant posed a sequence of questions: "Exactly what advantage do reading and literacy hold in terms of helping us to process information? What does reading give us that is of some social advantage that cannot be obtained through other media? Is it entirely certain that we cannot have a functioning society with an oral-aural method of communication, where we use television and its still unexploited resources of communication? [...] Is it impossible to conceive of a generation that has received its knowledge of the world and itself through television?" (p. 22).

John Searle. The storm over the university, in The New York Review of Books, 37:19, December 6, 1990, pp. 34-42.

Plato. Phaedrus, and The Seventh and Eighth Letters. Trans.

Walter Hamilton. Harmondsworth: Penguin Press, 1973.

In Phaedrus, Socrates, portrayed by Plato, articulates arguments against writing: "It will implant forgetfulness in their souls [of people, M.N.]: they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling these things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks; what you have discovered is a recipe [pharmakon, a potion; some translate it as recipe, M.N.] not for memory, but for reminder" (274-278e. p. 96). (References to Plato include the Stepha.n.u.s numbers. This makes them independent of the particular edition used by the reader.)

Claude Lvi-Strauss. Tristes Tropiques. Paris: Plon, 1967.

The author continues Socrates' thought: "It [writing] seems to have favored the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment" (p. 298).

From a very broad literature on literacy, including the emergence of writing and early written doc.u.ments, the following proved useful in defining the position stated in this book:

John Hladczuk, William Eller, and Sharon Hladczuk.

Literacy/Illiteracy in the World. A Bibliography. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989.

David R. Olson, Nancy Torrance, and Angela Hildyard, editors.

Literacy, Language, and Learning: The Nature and Consequences of Reading and Writing. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Robert Pattison. On Literacy: The Politics of the Word from Homer to the Age of Rock. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Gerd Baumann, editor. The Written Word: Literacy in Transition.

New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

National Advisory Council on Adult Education. Literacy Committee.

Illiteracy in America: Extent, Causes and Suggested Solutions, 1986.

Susan B. Neuman. Literacy in the Television Age. The Myth of the TV Effect. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1991.

Edward M. Jennings and Alan C. Purves, editors. Literate Systems and Individual Lives. Perspectives on Literacy and Schooling.

Albany: SUNY Press, 1991.

Dr. Harald Haarman. Universalgeschichte der Schrift.

Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag, 1990.

David Diringer. The Alphabet. A Key to the History of Mankind.

3rd edition. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1968.

Colin H. Roberts. The Birth of the Codex. London: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Martin Koblo. Die Entwicklung der Schrift. Wiesbaden: Brandsetter, 1963.

Donald Jackson. The Story of Writing. New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1981.

Hannsferdinand Dobler. Von der Keilschrift zum Computer.

Schrift, Buch, Wissenschaften. Munich: Bertelsmann, 1974.

Colin Clair. A History of European Printing. New York: Academic Press, 1976.

Lucien Paul Victor Febre. The Coming of the Book. The Impact of Printing 1450-1800. Trans. David Gerard. London: N.L.B., 1976.

Karlen Mooradian. The Dawn of Printing. Lexington, KY: a.s.sociation for Education in Journalism, 1972.

Warren Chappel. A Short History of the Printed Word. New York: Knopf, 1970.

C.P. Snow. The Two Cultures and a Second Look. An expanded version of The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.

Cambridge: At the University Press, 1959.