The information produced in our time, in one day, exceeds that of
the last 300 years. What this means can be more easily
understood by giving some life to this dry evaluation
originating from people in the business of quantifying data
processing.
Zizi, the hairdresser, and her companions exemplify today's
literate population. Portrayed by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, she
is contrasted to Pascal, who at the age of sixteen had already
published his work on conic sections, to Hugo Grotius, who
graduated from college at fifteen, and to Melanchton, who at the
age of twelve was a student at the once famous Heidelberg
University. Zizi knows how to get around. She is like a living
address on the Internet at its current stage of development: more
links than content, perennially under construction. She
continuously starts on new avenues, never pursuing any to the
end. Her well-being is supported by public money as she lives off
all the social benefits society affords. Zizi's conversations
are about her taxes, and characters she reads about in
magazines, sees on television, or meets on vacation. As
superficial as such conversations can be, they are full of catch
phrases associated or not with the celebrations of the day. Her
boyfriend, 34-year-old Bruno G., graduated with a degree in
political economy, drives a taxi cab, and still wonders what he
wants to do in life. He knows the name of every soccer team that
has won the championship since 1936; he knows by heart the names
of the players, which coach was fired when, and every game
score.
Melanchton studied reading, writing, Latin, Greek, and theology.
He knew by heart many fragments from the classical writers and
from the Bible. The world he lived in was small. To explain its
workings, one did not need to master mathematics or physics, but
philosophy. Since Melanchton can no longer be subjected to
multiple choice or to IQ tests, we will never know if he could
make it into college today. The question posed about all the
characters introduced is a simple one: Who is more ignorant,
Melanchton or Zizi?
Enzensberger's examples are from Germany, but the phenomena he
brings to his readers' attention transcend national boundaries.
He himself-writer, poet, publisher-is far from being an Internet
buff, although he might be as informed about it as his
characters are. As opposed to many other writers on literacy and
education, Enzensberger confirms that the efficiency reached in
the civilization of illiteracy (he does not call it that) makes
it possible to extend adolescence well into what used to be the
more productive time in the life of past generations. Everyone
goes to college-in some countries college education is a right.
This means that over half of the young people enter some form of
higher education. After graduating, they find out that they
still don't know what they want. Or, worse yet, that what they
know, or are certified as knowing, is of no consequence to what
they are expected to do. They will live, like Zizi, from social
benefits and will get extremely angry at anyone questioning
society's ability to provide them. For them, efficiency of human
practical experiences translate into the right to not worry
whether they will ever contribute to this efficiency. While still
students, they demand, and probably rightly so, that everything
be to the point. The problem is that neither they nor their
teachers can define what that means. What students get are more
choices among less significant subjects. That, at least, is how
it looks. They probably never finish a book from cover to cover.
Assignments are given to them in small portions, and usually
with photocopied pages, which they are expected to read. A
question-and-answer sheet is conveniently attached, with the hope
that the students will read the pages to find the answers, and
not copy them from more dedicated classmates.
That Zizi probably has a vocabulary as rich as that of a
16th-century scholar in the humanities can be assumed. That she
likely uses fewer than 1,000 of these words only says that this
is how much she needs in order to function efficiently.
Melanchton used almost all the words he knew. His work required
mastery of literacy so that he could express every new idea
prompted by the few new practical experiences of human
self-constitution he was involved in or aware of. He spoke and
wrote in three languages, two of which are used today only in
the specialties they are part of. Two or three sentences from a
tourist guidebook or from a tape is all Zizi needs for her next
vacation in Greece or Italy. For her, travel is a practical
experience as vital as any other. She knows the names of rock
groups, and lip-syncs the songs that express her concerns: sex,
drugs, loneliness. Her memory of any stage performance or movie
surpasses that of Melanchton, who probably knew by heart the
entire liturgy of the Catholic Church. Like everyone else
constituting their identities in the civilization of
illiteracy, Zizi knows what it takes to minimize her tax burden
and how to use coupons. The rhythm of her existence is defined
more by commercial than natural cycles. And she keeps refreshing
her base of practical information. Living in a time of change,
this is her chance to beat the system and all the literate norms
and constraints it imposes on her.
Melanchton, despite his literacy, would have been lost between
two consecutive tax laws of our time, and even more between
consecutive changes in fashion or music trends, or between
consecutive versions of computer software, not to say chips. He
belonged to a system appropriate to a stable world of relatively
unchanging expectations. What he studied would last him a
lifetime. Zizi and Bruno, as well as their friend Helga-the
third in Enzensberger's text-live in a world of unsettled,
heterogeneous information, based on ad hoc methods delivered by
magazines, or through the Internet, that one has only to scan or
surf in order to find useful data.
At this juncture, readers familiar with the World Wide Web,
whether passionate about it or strongly against it, understand
why I describe Zizi as a living Internet address. To derive some
meaning from this description, and especially to avoid the
appearance of drawing a caricature of the Internet, we need to
focus on the pragmatic context in which Zizi constitutes herself
and in which the Internet is constituted as a global experience.
The picture one gets from contrasting the famous Melanchton to
Zizi the hairdresser is not exactly fair, as it would be unfair
to contrast the Library of Alexandria to the Internet. On the
one hand, we have a tremendous collection representative of
human knowledge (and the illusion of knowledge). On the other we
have the embodiment of extremely effective methods for acquiring,
testing, using, and discarding information required by human
pragmatics. The world in which Melanchton worked was limited to
Central Europe and Rome. News circulated mainly by word-of-
mouth. Melanchton, like everyone who was raised with and worked
amid books, was subjected to less information than we are today.
He did not need an Intel inside computer or search engine to
find what he wanted. He would not understand how anyone could
replace the need for and pleasure of browsing by a machine called
Browser. His was a world of associations, not matches, no matter
how successful. Human minds, not machines, made up his cognitive
world.
Literacy opened access to knowledge as long as this knowledge was
compatible with the pragmatic structures it embodied and
supported. The ozone hole of over- information broke the
protective bubble of literacy. In the new pragmatic context, the
human being, thirsty for data, seems at the mercy of the
informational environment that shapes work, entertainment,
life-in short, everything. Access to study was far from being
equal, or even close to some standard of fairness, in
Melanchton's time of obsession with excellence. Information
itself was very expensive. In order to become a
hairdresser-were it possible and necessary 500 years ago-Zizi, as
well as the millions who attend career training schools, would
have had to pay much more for her training than she did in our
age of unlimited equal access to mediocrity. Knowledge was
acquired through channels as diverse as family, schools,
churches, and disseminated in very few books, or orally, or
through imitation.
Individuals in Melanchton's time formed a set of expectations and
pursued goals that changed minimally over their lifetime, since
the pragmatic context remained the same. This ended with the
dynamic practical experiences of self-constitution that led to
the pragmatic context of our day. Ended also are the variety of
forms of human cooperation and solidarity-as imperfect as they
were-characteristic of a scale in which survival of the
individual was essential for the survival and well-being of the
community. They are replaced by a generalized sense of
competition. Not infrequently, this takes the form of adversity,
socially acceptable when performed by literate lawyers, for
instance, yet undesirable when performed by illiterate
terrorists.
More suggestive than precise, this description, in which Zizi and
Melanchton play the leading characters, exemplifies the chasm
between yesterday and today. A further examination of what is
going on in our world allows the observation that literate
language no longer exclusively, or even dominantly, affects and
regulates day-to-day activities. A great amount of language used
in the daily routine of people living in economically advanced
countries was simply wiped out or absorbed in machine
transactions. Digital networks, connecting production lines,
distribution channels, and points of sale spectacularly augment
the volume and variety of such transactions. Practical
experiences of shopping, transportation, banking, and stock
market transactions require literacy less and less. Automation
rationalized away the literate component of many activities. All
over the world, regardless of the economic or technological
level reached, communication-specific endeavors, such as
advertisement, political campaigns, various forms of ceremonial
(religious, military, athletic), make crystal clear that
literate language use is subordinated to the function or purpose
pursued.
The developments under scrutiny affect surviving pre-literate
societies-the nomadic, animistic population of Sudan, the tribes
of the Brazilian Amazon forests, remote populations of Africa,
Asia, Australia-as they affect the literate and post- literate.
Without going into the details of the process, we should be aware
that commodities coming from such societies, including the
commodity of labor, no less than their needs and expectations,
are traded on the global market. In the African Sahara, TV is
watched-sets connected to car batteries-as much as in the high
mountains of Peru populated by illiterate Incas. As virtual
points of sale, the lands with pre-literate societies are traded
in the futures markets as possible tourist resorts, or as a
source of cheap labor. Experiences of practical
self-constitution as nomadic, animistic, and tribal are no
longer confined to the small scale of the respective community.
In the effective world of a global pragmatics of high
efficiency, their hunger and misery shows up in ledgers as
potential aid and cooperation programs. Don't read here only
greed and cynicism, rather the expression of reciprocal
dependencies. AIDS on the African sub- continent and the Ebola
epidemics only capture the image of shared dangers. Across the
Atlantic Ocean, the plants of the disappearing Amazon rain
forest, studied for their healing potential, capture an image of
opportunity. In such situations and locations, the pragmatics of
literacy and illiteracy meet and interact.