Okay, I *hope* this article is intended to be satirical. Because otherwise, it makes very little sense to me!
The real value of reading as opposed to audio or text messaging is that it's *incredibly efficient*. People can read much faster than they can listen. What humans have done is adapted their most sophisticated, information rich sense- vision- to assimilate a different kind of data.
And multimedia doesn't replace text for even simple applications. Imagine reading a menu where all you had was pictures? They might look tasty, but it won't tell you what kind of sauce is on it. Or worse, a menu where you had to press a button to have someone read it aloud to you. Agonizingly slow. Sure, people could develop a system of icons for simple stuff- and have- think about symbols for rest rooms or international street signs. But text easily conveys both the simple and the complex.
I currently work in a factory that employs a lot of people in 'low end' blue-collar jobs, and I'm here to tell you, lack of literacy is an serious impediment to anything more complicated than mopping floors. We teach people the technical terms they need relating to our business, but the information is written down. And any method that used multimedia or audio recording as a replacement is going to slow things down so severely that it will *never* be accepted. We need better-educated people, not worse. And IMO the very few jobs that can be done without literacy will be more than adequately filled by the small minority incapable of learning adequate reading skills.
And your point about the educated ruling class vs. the semi-illiterate population. Yeah, incredibly bad is one way to put it. Recipe for disaster is another way. The biggest problem we have now in our application of democracy is that people don't read and think enough about it. We're complacent, we take it for granted. Encourage people to fail to acquire both critical thinking skills (already an endangered skill!) and tools for gathering data, and it only gets worse. Which is not to say there aren't some would-be imperialists out there who'd like to see that happen. But on the day this country only has a 5% literacy rate, America will be truly dead.
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Date: 2006-11-14 02:25 pm (UTC)The real value of reading as opposed to audio or text messaging is that it's *incredibly efficient*. People can read much faster than they can listen. What humans have done is adapted their most sophisticated, information rich sense- vision- to assimilate a different kind of data.
And multimedia doesn't replace text for even simple applications. Imagine reading a menu where all you had was pictures? They might look tasty, but it won't tell you what kind of sauce is on it. Or worse, a menu where you had to press a button to have someone read it aloud to you. Agonizingly slow. Sure, people could develop a system of icons for simple stuff- and have- think about symbols for rest rooms or international street signs. But text easily conveys both the simple and the complex.
I currently work in a factory that employs a lot of people in 'low end' blue-collar jobs, and I'm here to tell you, lack of literacy is an serious impediment to anything more complicated than mopping floors. We teach people the technical terms they need relating to our business, but the information is written down. And any method that used multimedia or audio recording as a replacement is going to slow things down so severely that it will *never* be accepted. We need better-educated people, not worse. And IMO the very few jobs that can be done without literacy will be more than adequately filled by the small minority incapable of learning adequate reading skills.
And your point about the educated ruling class vs. the semi-illiterate population. Yeah, incredibly bad is one way to put it. Recipe for disaster is another way. The biggest problem we have now in our application of democracy is that people don't read and think enough about it. We're complacent, we take it for granted. Encourage people to fail to acquire both critical thinking skills (already an endangered skill!) and tools for gathering data, and it only gets worse. Which is not to say there aren't some would-be imperialists out there who'd like to see that happen. But on the day this country only has a 5% literacy rate, America will be truly dead.
//end rant...*g*//