taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (04/28/87)
There were lots of articles about the importance of literacy (or the lack thereof) in this newsgroup. I just can't help throwing in some thoughts of my own, especially since I disagree with some of the opinions expressed here. This is my first posting to this group, so please bear with me if I make some obvious points. I am talking about letter-literacy (not the "computer"-kind). It is (I think) quite clear that conventional script is a (rather successful) way of copying, storing and repeating human speech. So, some argue, someone who is (letter-) illiterate should be able to cope with world problems as well as a literate person, just using spoken language, recording and transmitting it as sound, as long as other persons don't insist on written communication. My experience is, however, that written script serves as more than just a recording medium. It is also a medium of reflection. Consider what you do when you write an article. Well, maybe not you - I know people who just type in stuff as they think it up and mail it, period. Those who take writing somewhat more serious, however, will go several times over what they have written, adding, deleting, amending and rearranging words until they are reasonably confident that the whole represents the ideas that they want to convey. Note that during this revision process that often takes many times as long as the original writing, the "current state" when re-read acts as a feedback medium. You could argue that voice recording can serve the same purpose. Apart from the technical and procedural problems of "editing sound", a voice recording is inherently different from a page of written words. The former is strictly one-dimensional and sequential-access (if you forgive the computer terms). A page of paper (or a (large) screen of text) allows random jumping around, reading and correlating phrases and words almost as fast as you can think. (If you are used to doing so, anyway.) The point I want to make is that: when we speak ad lib, we do not produce, on the average, particularly profound output. What we say is mostly fraught with ambigous, low-density ramblings. In a face-to-face (or voice-to-voice) dialogue, quick back-and-forth exchanges (*friendly dialogue*) is used to clarify, compact and intensify the point we are trying to get across. However, if we try to compose a message (of any form) without direct interaction to the intended receiver(s), we need a medium to hold our preliminary thoughts while we clean them up. I maintain that voice recordings are not a good medium for that. Of course we can, to a certain degree, replace written language with (written or displayed) icons. However, the whole idea of icons is to *simplify* and *reduce* the information contained in them. To still make sense, icons rely heavily on context. The mailbox icon on a mac screen has its meaning (e.g., "send this message") only because it's on THIS PARTICULAR mac screen. Painted on a house wall, it's most likely meaningless. Because of that, icon and picture languages, if they are serious simplifications of current letter languages, cannot be suitable to independent information recording. (If they are just as complex, why bother? We already have Chinese and Japanese :-)) Even sending your (almost proverbial) mac icon in a mail message to a friend usually makes no sense UNLESS you can predict the context that this icon will be in when it is received. It seems (at least to me) that turning communication into a context-guessing game does not further its cause. Someone wrote (rather disparagingly) that written words are "just" an "attempt" to record spoken words. I maintain that the ability to take human thought "offline", to record it *without relying on immediate context* is one of the most important accomplishments of the human race. (Yes, I know there's always some context necessary.) It's no accident that many animal races have *language* but almost none have *written language*. It's a real intellectual quantum leap. In fact I believe that only by a feedback interaction between spoken and written word have we achieved the (relative) intellectual proficiency to abstract thought that we have (for better or worse) today. Of course, you may claim that Joe Random does not need abstract thought. In which case we have some fundamental differences to slug out... Again, sorry if I have belaboured the obvious. I am not a long-term reader of this newsgroup. If you think I'm wrong, feel free to tell me. (Communication, no flames please.) Peter Kiehtreiber
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (05/05/87)
You might be interested in Count Alfred Korzybsky (sp). He developped
the "science" of general semantics. One of the things he posits as
man's greatest tool is his ability to "timebind". Ie write down
things to pass own to generations.
In all aspects I agree, yet it takes a superior writer to not only
patiently describe the "bones" and "muscles" type facts of a thing,
but to animate that spectre to live again in the minds of another
generation.
Or in another way:
teacher -- two and two are four
child -- I know that ... but what's a two?
Richard Karasik
sun!arete!richard