I ran across the term ‘post-literate’ the other day, and have been trying to see how well I can define it… I suspect that the term, as used by those who often use relates to the idea that we are moving towards a world where traditional literacy will die off… This is certainly an incendiary term for those who deal with the printed word…or read books, or read magazines, newspapers, or even small blogs.
You may have noticed that I italicized the term ‘traditional’ in that I suspect (once again…I must be in a suspicious mood…) the vision which most see of the term literacy, includes a lot of things which many people do…less and less.
But to try to get past this red herring (post-literacy), there are things which are obviously in flux in our world. More and more people use cursive writing less and less, and other than or taking quick note, fewer people actually take the time to use a pen and paper. More and more of us don’t ‘write’…we type.
More people get their news from the internet than newspapers in the USA (I just heard…), and with the slow, but unrelenting demise of magazines, newspapers, and most of the other ephemeral forms of print you can see another tack which could support the fact that things are changing faster than we realize.
The recent to-do about the debut of the iPad 2 (and other competing tablet computer appliances) may relate to these trends. In fact the broad concept of traditional literacy would seem be crumbling in many areas, for many reasons…
The traditional letter, as a classic form of correspondence has been supplanted with the quick, terse email. The ongoing adoption of SMS and MMS texting, especially with students and most under 30’s would suggest that the email is on some shaky ground too. For the sake of clarity, I should mention that I ‘text’ only under duress…I’m old school…I guess. Nonetheless, these ongoing changes are not waiting for me…or possibly for you either.
The idea of the written word (OK, the printed word) as entertainment may be broadening, in that even on this blog I have reviewed what could be seen as a post-literate novel (which integrated traditional text, with an online community, video content, and some puzzles). What we used to fall fiction may be blending with video, computer games and virtual communities of fellow ‘readers’ into something beyond what most of us would call a novel.
It may be that we are indeed seeing the end of what has been termed the Gutenberg Parenthesis. Another take of this might be that these ongoing changes in how we communicate with symbols, may force us to have to broaden this idea of what literacy really is.
