The Civilization of Illiteracy, by Mihai Nadin
(C) Mihai Nadin 1997
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Foreward
Introduction
Literacy in a Changing World
Thinking about alternatives
Progressing towards illiteracy?
Book One The Chasm Between Yesterday and TomorrowContrasting charactersChoose a letter and clickKeeping up with faster livingLoaded literacyMan proposes, man disposesBeyond the commitment to literacyA moving targetThe wise fox"Between us the rift"Malthus revisitedCaptives to literacy
The Epitome of the Civilization of Illiteracy
For the love of trade
"The best of the useful and the best of the ornamental"
The rear-view mirror syndrome
Book Two From Signs to LanguageSemeion revisitedThe first record is a whipScale and thresholdSigns and tools
From Orality to Writing
Individual and collective memory
Cultural memory
Frames of existence
The alienation of immediacy
Orality and Writing Today: What Do People Understand When They
Understand
Language?
A feedback called confirmation
Primitive orality and incipient writing
Assumptions
Taking literacy for granted
To understand understanding
Words about images
The Functioning of Language
Expression, communication, signification
The idea machine
Writing and the expression of ideas
Future and past
Knowing and understanding
Univocal, equivocal, ambiguous
Making thoughts visible
Alphabet cultures and a lesson from aphasia
Language and Logic
Logics behind the logic
A plurality of intellectual structures
The logics of actions
Sampling
Memetic optimism
Book Three Language as Mediating MechanismThe power of insertionMyth as mediating pre-textDifferentiation and coordinationIntegration and coordination revisitedLife after literacy
Literacy, Language and Market
Preliminaries
Products 'R' Us
The language of the market
The language of products
Transaction and literacy
Whose market? Whose freedom?
New markets, new languages
Literacy and the transient
Market, advertisement, literacy
Language and Work
Inside and outside the world
We are what we do
Literacy and the machine
The disposable human being
Scale of work, scale of language
Innate heuristics
The realm of alternatives
Mediation of mediation
Literacy and Education
"Know the best"
Ideal vs. real
Relevance
Temples of knowledge
Coherence and connection
Plenty of questions
The equation of a compromise
To be a child
Who are we kidding?
What about a