gls@odyssey.att.com (George L Sicherman) (07/19/90)
krweiss@ucdavis.edu writes: > I have no problem with the proposition that computer literacy is a > predictor of literacy in general. I can't believe that a GUI makes > people less inclined to run a spelling checker. In the 16th century nobody ever spelled a word wrong. Print created the demand for uniform spelling, by accelerating people's consumption of information. Before silent reading, it didn't matter how you spelled a word, so long as it was intelligible to the reader. And before print, you wrote for one, not for many. In the age of print, language must be streamlined! Replace print by another medium and you destroy the motive for uniform spelling, to say nothing of uniform typography. Col. G. L. Sicherman gls@odyssey.att.COM
philip@pescadero.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick) (07/20/90)
Col. George L Sicherman commented earlier that: > In the 16th century nobody ever spelled a word wrong. Print created > the demand for uniform spelling, by accelerating people's consumption > of information. Before silent reading, it didn't matter how you > spelled a word, so long as it was intelligible to the reader... In the 16th century, most people were illiterate. If you make a technology more accessible, perhaps some "standard" will drop because it's no longer only used by an elite. However, the overall "standard" of society may potentially be improved. This was true of literacy; it will be interesting to see the impact of computers in this area... Philip Machanick