Thinking about the Post-Literate World

What does it mean when we hear that incoming Harvard students don't read? Should this concern us? What kind of things will change if people no longer read books?

89. Thinking about the Post-Literate World

Just before Christmas I listened to an engaging discussion between

Johann Kurtz

and

Mary Harrington

.

Noticing towards Bethlehem w/ Mary Harrington

As happens with these sorts of discussions, it spurred a number of thoughts for me that I thought worth sharing with you. I encourage you to listen to the whole interview. Its excellent and it’s much better heard first hand than mediated through a summary here. In short, Mary and Johann discuss the post-literate world and what it might mean. We should be dwelling on these changes happening right before us because they will have a significant impact on the world around us, perhaps as much as the printing press had in creating the literate world. Mary’s thesis, which I think has merit to it, is that there is a possibility that digital media, with its combination of text, image and video, is re-teaching us to “notice” patterns in ways that are reminiscent of the pre-literate though patterns of someone who lives in a world of primary orality, that is, without the technologies of writing and print.

The technolo…