|
Thanks Humayun, Djdd.
Actually, although I have qualms, I don't doubt we're heading towards a post-literate society. It is all too easy to imagine a time when the last Reader — some quaint, comical, professorial figure — having finally failed in the years-long rear-guard action against the erosion of his university funding, is ultimately rolled up into the unpopular Cultural History department of some 22nd century university (the occasional PhD student still comes to penetrate the wisdom of Homer Simpson). All the world’s books having finally have been scanned into a pixel, they are quickly forgotten, never to be read again except by an incurious machine.
(No doubt they scoffed when someone suggested abandoning latin.)
And if anyone thinks this is too pessimistic, consider something I read about only last year. (It sounds a bit premature to me, I must admit, but not totally implausible.) Supposedly there is already emerging in history departments worldwide a potential problem. The newest students entering university are unable to read original documents written in plain English simply because they were written in cursive script. But don’t despair! Apparently there is a technological solution on the horizon, and before long we ought to be able to translate into typed text the hand written scribblings of such historical figures as Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
Phew!
P.S. I guess they were never going to use the word Twit.
|