EARLY TECHNOLOGIES OF INFORMATION WRITING SYSTEMS AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF LITERACY JULY 8 2009 History of Information Lecture 2 Dan Perkel Today s Plan 1 Summary and recap from Monday Talking about literacy The prescursors to writing Early writing systems and true writing The alphabet The Consequences of Literacy Assessing the Consequences 2 Summary and Recap Elements of the information age 3 Writing systems Print Literacy the public Information property Authoritative reference Newspapers Imagery Advertising Point to point communication phones Broadcast media TV Engineers designers technicians researchers Corporations The Internet New media The state Information and Crisis What is technological determinism 4 new technologies are discovered by an essentially internal process of research and development which then sets the conditions for social change and progress Progress in particular is the history of these inventions which created the modern world The effects of the technologies whether direct or indirect foreseen or unforeseen are as it were the rest of history Raymond Williams Television Technology and Cultural Form What is technological determinism 5 Technology develops under the weight of some internal logic autonomously from social forces Technological progression is linear and the new replaces the old Technology exerts and outside impact on society usually using words like impacts effects etc Assessing claims 6 Necessary vs Necessary and Sufficient or a factor vs the factor Conflating technology with institution Labeling constraints as resources and vice versa Just getting your history wrong Assuming technological change with everythinn else staying the same remember the housewife hosing down the waterproof home of the future Dealing with unintended consequences Moral hazards 7 Literacy The faculty of language stands at the center of our conception of mankind speech makes us human and literacy makes us civilized David Olson in From Utterance to Text The Bias of Language in Speech and Writing The proliferation of literacy 8 Print literacy Media literacy Information literacy Traditional literacy Basic literacy Functional literacy Visual literacy Financial literacy Cultural literacy Critical literacy Digital literacy Computer literacy Scientific literacy And there s more And of course all of the corresponding illiteracies So here s the question Is Twitter along with instant messaging and texting contributing to the destruction of language skills among college students 9 The end of writing as we know it 10 The telegraphic style would be terse condensed expressive sparing of expletives and utterly ignorant of synonyms and would propel the English language toward a new standard of perfection Geoff Nunberg quoting Conrad Swackhammer s 1848 article The Influence of the Telegraph on Literature in United States Democratic Review See Nunberg Geoff All Thumbs Fresh Air Commentary May 16 2008 And compared to formal writing the casual lingo of Twitter includes a greater frequency of OK and f 11 And if it is the end of writing as we know it 12 Literacy is a human right a tool of personal empowerment and a means for social and human development Educational opportunities depend on literacy Literacy is at the heart of basic education for all and essential for eradicating poverty reducing child mortality curbing population growth achieving gender equality and ensuring sustainable development peace and democracy There are good reasons why literacy is at the core of Education for All EFA src UNESCO Education Literacy Portal http www unesco org en literacy literacy important retrieved on July 7 2009 And if it is the end of writing as we know it 13 Literacy is not merely a cognitive skill of reading writing and arithmetic for literacy helps in the acquisition of learning and life skills that when strengthened by usage and application throughout people s lives lead to forms of individual community and societal development that are sustainable Koihiro Matsuura UNESCO Director General in his message on the occasion of International Literacy Day 2006 Literacy as Freedom UNESCO Literacy decade slogan Quiz time 14 Happy Birthday to me by xNickixstockx http xnickixstockx deviantart com art Happy Birthday to me 69803067 Quiz time 15 1 2 3 In one short paragraph six sentences or less answer the following question Are Goody and Watt are making a technologically deterministic argument Use evidence from the reading to support your answer Be concise 16 Precursors to writing The first information system language 17 No direct evidence about the origins of spoken language 1886 Linguistic Society of Paris forbids toute communication concernante l origine du langage Any paper dealing with the origin of language Some evidence of language 150 000 200 000 years ago No existing primitive languages all modern human populations speak languages of comparable complexity Early representational artifacts 18 From the Great Hall of Bulls Cave Paintings found in Lascaux France 15 13 000 B C E though perhaps even older Retreived from http www culture gouv fr culture arcnat lascaux en Cro magnon bone tool perhaps the earliest known form of notation that may mark phases of the moon Marshack Alexander Image retrieved from http www donsmaps com cavepaintings2 html Src image unknown Images and symbols were markers of periodic and continuous cultural processes of rites and of repetitive myths and stories Marshack Alexander 1999 The Art and Symbols of Ice Age Man 19 Four pre conditions of true writing 20 Deliberately identified surface Distinctions between figured and ground Differentiations of marks and interval i e space and difference Principles of visual organization such as sequence scale orientation and juxtaposition Drucker and McVarish 2009 Graphic Design History pp12 21 True writing 22 True writing The graphic expression of language Drucker and McVarish 1999 Graphic Design History Origins of true writing 23 Divine origin a dominant theory until the 1700s Most likely theory is economic roots and adminstration of expanding empires Robinson Andrew 1999 The Origins of Writing A popular theory is that clay tokens for business transactions in Mesopotamia 8000 6000 B C E were the pre cursors to Sumerian Cuneiform around 3000 B C E Clay tokens Mesopotamia src http 24www english illinois edu people faculty debaron essays wordtech htm Some functions of early writing 25 Accounting Sumeria Greece Memory aids in Greece Codification of