20 SEP 2025 by ideonexus
Monarchies Depend on Illiteracy
Ignorance was a foundation stone of feudal Europe. The vast inequalities of the aristocratic order were partly able to be sustained because the population had no way to find out about the scale of the corruption, abuses and inefficiencies of their governments.
And the old feudal hierarchy was justified not so much by logical argument as by what Walter Ong might have recognised as very pre-literate appeals to mystical and emotional thinking.
This was what historians of the seventeenth centur... 1 
notes
notes20 SEP 2025 by ideonexus
Written Word Enabled Philosophy, Screen Content Unravels It
The classicist Eric Havelock argued that the arrival of literacy in ancient Greece was the catalyst for the birth of philosophy. Once people had a means of pinning ideas down on the page to interrogate them, refine them and build on them, a whole new revolutionary way of analytic and abstract thinking was born — one that would go on to shape our entire civilisation3. With the birth of writing received ways of thinking could be challenged and improved. This was our species’ cognitive liber...
1 While I find this essay goes a bit into alarmism in places, I do appreciate how it communicates the importance of long-form reading in the intellectual and social advancement of civilization. I appreciate the idea that the written word is a cognitive prosthesis that can enhance our intellectual capabilities beyond what was capable during the era of oral traditions. Screens have demonstrated the same potential, but the flood of highly addictive screen-content junk-food seems so much more destructive than the pulp novels of the past.
20 SEP 2025 by ideonexus
The Screen Revolution is Breaking the Thread of Literacy
If the reading revolution represented the greatest transfer of knowledge to ordinary men and women in history, the screen revolution represents the greatest theft of knowledge from ordinary people in history.
Our universities are at the front line of this crisis. They are now teaching their first truly “post-literate” cohorts of students, who have grown up almost entirely in the world of short-form video, computer games, addictive algorithms (and, increasingly, AI).
Because ubiquitous m... 1 notes
notes25 FEB 2016 by ideonexus
Old Media is Text-Centric; New Media is a Collage
Modern literacy has always meant being able to both read and write narrative in the media forms of the day, whatever they may be. Just being able to read is not sufficient.
For centuries, this has meant being able to consume and produce words through reading and writing and, to a lesser extent, listening and speaking. But the world of digital expression has changed all of this in three respects:
New media demand new literacies. Because of inexpensive, easy-to-use, widely distributed new med...
1 13 FEB 2012 by ideonexus
Information is the Power to Control
Information is a
part of all systems of power. Top bureaucrats try to control
information as part of their control over subordinates and clients.
Corporations try to control information through trade secrets
and patents. Militaries try to control information using the
rationale of “national security.” So-called freedom of information—
namely, public access to documents produced in
bureaucracies—is a threat to top bureaucrats.
In a society where not everyone can read and write, litera...Where people can read, publish to media, and speak out against their employers, they have power.
30 NOV -0001 by ideonexus
13 Percent of the English Language is Not Spelled Phoneti...
I received a letter today from the "Reading Reform Foundation," which tells me that "23 million (American) adults are functionally illiterate, unable to read an advertisement, a job application, directions on a medicine bottle." They say "30 percent of all schoolchildren have serious reading difficulties."
I rather believe this, judging from my own limited experience with people. But why is this?
Can it be that part of the reason is the matter of English spelling? The letter tells me that "87...Folksonomies: phonetics
Folksonomies: phonetics
If 87 percent of English words are spelled phonetically, then that means more than one in 10 is not, further explaining high levels of illiteracy in our culture.
