When a product is offered with a lifetime warranty and the
manufacturer goes bankrupt within months from the date of the
sales transaction, questions pertaining to ethics,
misrepresentation, and advertisement are usually asked. Such
incidents, to which no one is immune, cannot be discarded since
the experience of market transactions is an experience in human
values, no matter how relative these are. Honesty, respect for
truth, respect for the given word, written or not, belong to the
civilization of literacy and are expressed in its books. The
civilization of illiteracy renders these and all other books
senseless. But it would be wrong to suggest that markets of the
civilization of illiteracy corrupt everything and that, instead
of confirming values, they actually empty values of
significance. Markets do something else: They integrate
expectations into their own mechanisms. In short, they have to
live up to expectations not because these were written down, but
because markets would otherwise not succeed. How this takes
place is a longer story, starting with the example given: What
happens to a lifetime warranty when the manufacturer goes
bankrupt?
The pragmatic framework of human self-constitution in language
through the use of the powerful means of literacy is one of
stability and progressive growth. The means of production
facilitated in this framework are endowed with qualities,
physical, first of all, that guarantee permanency. The
industrial model is an extension of the model of creation deeply
rooted in literacy-dominated human activity. Machines were
powerful and dominating. They, as well as the products they
turned out, lasted much longer than the generation of people who
use them.
After participating in the complex circumstances that made the
Industrial Revolution possible, literacy was stimulated and
supported by it. Incandescent lighting, more powerful than the
gas or oil lamp, expanded the time available for reading, among
other activities. Books were printed faster and more cheaply
because paper was produced faster and more cheaply, and the
printing press was driven by stronger engines. More time was
available for study because industrial society discovered that a
qualified workforce was more productive once machines become more
complicated. All this happened against the background of an
obsession with permanency reflected also in the structure of the
markets. As opposed to agricultural products, subject to weather
and time, industrial products can be accepted on consignment.
Literacy was a mediating tool here since transactions became
less and less homogeneous, and the institution of credit more
powerful due to the disparity between production and consumption
cycles. The scale of the industrial market corresponded to the
scale of industrial economy. Industrial markets are optimally
served by the sequential nature of literacy and the linearity
inherent in its structure. Production cycles are long, and one
cycle follows the other, like seasons, like letters in a word.
Remember when new model automobiles came out in October, and
only in October? A large manufacturer embodied permanence and so
did its product. In this framework, a lifetime warranty reflects
a product's promised performance and the language describing
this performance.
This is no longer the case in the civilization of illiteracy.
From the design of the product, to the materials used and
principles applied, almost nothing is meant to last beyond a
cycle of optimal efficiency. It is not a moral decision, neither
is it a devious plan. Different expectations are embodied in our
products. Their life cycle reflects the dynamics of change
corresponding to the new scale of human self-constitution, and
the obsession with efficiency. Products become transient because
the cycles of relative uniformity of our self-constitution are
shorter.
We know that life expectancy has increased, and it may well be
that people past the peak of their productive capability will
soon represent the majority of the population. Nonetheless, the
increased level of productivity facilitated by mediating
strategies is independent of this change. Longer life means
presence in more cycles of change (which translates into other
changes, such as in education and training, family life). What
was once a relatively homogeneous life becomes a succession of
shorter periods, some only loosely connected. In comparison to
centuries of slow, incremental development, relatively abrupt
change testifies to a new human condition.
Where once literacy was necessary to coordinate the variety of
contributions from many people-who projected as much permanency
in their products, even if the individuals were more literate in
drawing than in writing-new forms of coordination and
integration are now in place. The corresponding pragmatics is
characterized by intension and distribution, and the products
capture the projected sense of change that dominates all human
experiences. Thus conditions were created for markets of the
transient, in which lifetime functioning of ingenious artifacts
is promised, because the lifetime meant is as short as the cycle
of the entire line. The fact that the manufacturer goes bankrupt
is not even surprising since the structural characteristics of
the obsession with efficiency results in manufacturing entities
that last as long (or as short) as the need for their product,
or as long as the functional characteristics of the product
satisfy market expectations. This is how expectations are
integrated in market mechanisms. Since mediation is now
exercised through many literacies integrated in the product, it
is clear why, together with the exhausted lifetime warranty, we
throw away not only manufactured items, but also the literacy
(and literacies) embodied in them. Each transaction in the
transient corresponds to a pragmatics that transforms the
Faustian promise into an advertising slogan.