The Civilization of Illiteracy | Page 8

of synchronization, the dynamics of life forms or of
artificial constructs elude the domain of literacy as they constitute a
new pragmatic framework. This becomes apparent when we compare
the fundamental characteristics of language to the characteristics of the
many new sign systems complementing or replacing it. Language is
sequential, centralized, linear, and corresponds to the stage of linear
growth of humankind. Matched by the linear increase of the means of
subsistence and production required for the survival and development
of the species, this stage reached its implicit potential. The new stage
corresponds to distributed, non-sequential forms of human activity,
nonlinear dependencies. Reflecting the exponential growth of
humankind (population, expectations, needs, and desires), this new
stage is one of alternative resources, mainly cognitive in nature,
compensating for what was perceived as limited natural means for
supporting humankind. It is a system of a different scale, suggestively
represented by our concerns with globality and higher levels of
complexity. Therefore, humans can no longer develop within the
limitations of an intrinsically centralized, linear, hierarchic,
proportional model of contingencies that connect existence to
production and consumption, and to the life-support system.
Alternatives that affect the nature of life, work, and social interaction
emerge through practical experiences of a fundamentally new
condition.
Literacy and the means of human self-constitution based on it reached
their full potential decades ago. The new means, which are not as
universal (i.e., as encompassing) as language, open possibilities for
exponential growth, resulting from their connectivity and improved
involvement of cognitive resources. As long as the world was
composed of small units (tribes, communities, cities, counties),
language, despite differences in structure and use, occupied a central
place. It had a unifying character and exercised a homogenizing

function within each viable political unit. The world has entered the
phase of global interdependencies. Many local languages and their
literacies of relative, restricted significance emerge as instruments of
optimization. What takes precedence today is interconnectivity at many
levels, a function for which literacy is ill prepared. Citizens become
Netizens, an identity that relates them to the entire world, not only to
where they happen to live and work.
The encompassing system of culture broke into subsystems, not just
into the "two cultures" of science and literacy that C.P. Snow discussed
in 1959, hoping idealistically that a third culture could unite and
harmonize them. Market mechanisms, representative of the competitive
nature of human beings, are in the process of emancipating themselves
from literacy. Where literate norms and regulations still in place
prevent this emancipation-as is the case with government activity and
bureaucracies, the military, and legal institutions-the price is expressed
in lower efficiency and painful stagnation. Some European countries,
more productive in impeding the work of the forces of renewal, pay
dearly for their inability to understand the need for structural changes.
United or not in a Europe of broader market opportunities, member
countries will have to free themselves from the rigid constraints of a
pragmatic framework that no longer supports their viability. Conflicts
are not solved; solutions are a long time in coming.
One more remark before ending this introduction. It seems that those
who run the scholarly publishing industry are unable to accept that
someone can have an idea that does not originate from a quotation. In
keeping with literacy's reliance on authority, I have acknowledged in
the references the works that have some bearing on the ideas presented
in this book. Few, very few indeed, are mentioned in the body of the
text. The line of argument deserves priority over the stereotypes of
referencing. This does not prevent me from acknowledging here, in
addition to Leibniz and Peirce, the influence of thinkers and writers
such as Roberto Maturana, Terry Winograd, George Lakoff, Lotfi
Zadeh, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, George Steiner, Marshall
McLuhan, Ivan Illich, Yuri M. Lotman, and even Baudrillard, the
essayist of the post-industrial. If I misunderstood any of them, it is not

because I do not respect their contributions. Seduced by my own
interest and line of reasoning, I integrated what I thought could become
solid bricks into a building of arguments which was to be mine. I am
willing to take blame for its design and construction, remaining
thankful to all those whose fingerprints are, probably, still evident on
some of the bricks I used.
In the 14 years that have gone by since I started thinking and writing
about the civilization of illiteracy, many of the directions I brought into
discussion are making it into the public domain. But I should be the last
to be surprised or unhappy that reality changed before I was able to
finish this book, and before publishers could make up their minds about
printing it. The Internet was not yet driving the stock market, neither
had the writers of future shock had published their