In defining the context of change leading from an
all-encompassing literacy to the civilization of illiteracy, I
referred to the Malthusian principle (Population, when
unchecked, increases geometrically, while food sources increase
arithmetically). What Malthus failed to acknowledge is the
heuristic nature of the human species, i.e., the progressive
realization of the creative potential of the only known species
that, in addition to maintaining its natural condition,
generates its own a-natural condition. In the process of their
self-constitution, humans generate also the means for their
survival and future growth beyond the circularity of mere
survival strategies. The 19th century economist Henri George
gave the following example of this characteristic: "Both the
jayhawk and the man eat chicken, but the more jayhawks, the fewer
chickens, while the more men, the more chickens." (Just think
about the Purdue chicken industry!) The formula is flawed.
Humans also intervene in the jayhawk-chicken relation; the number
of animals and birds in a certain area is affected by more
elements than what eats what; and the population increase is
meaningless unless associated with patterns of human practical
experiences. Species frequently become extinct due to human, not
animal, intervention. Despite all this, Henri George's
characterization captured an important aspect of the human
species, as it defined itself in the human scale that made
literacy possible and necessary.
George's time corresponded to some interesting though misleading
messages that followed the pattern of Malthus' law. People were
running out of timber, coal, and oil for lamps, just as we
expect to run out of many other resources (minerals, energy and
food sources, water, etc.). Originators of messages regarding the
exhaustion of such resources, regardless of the time they utter
them, ignore the fact that during previous shortages, humans
focused on alternatives, and made them part of new practical
experiences. This was the case leading to the use of coal, when
the timber supply decreased in Britain in the 16th century, and
this will be the case with the shortages mentioned above: for
lighting, kerosene was extracted from the first oil wells
(1859); more coal reserves were discovered; better machines were
built that used less energy and made coal extraction more
efficient; industry adapted other minerals; and the strict
dependence on natural cycles and farming was progressively
modified through food processing and storage techniques.
The pragmatic framework of current human praxis is based on the
structural characteristics of this higher scale of humankind. It
affects the nature of human work and the nature of social,
political, and national organization within emerging national
states. A retrospective of the dynamics of growth and resource
availability shows that with language, writing and reading, and
finally with literacy, and even more through engineering outside
language experience, a coherent framework of pragmatic human
action was put in place, and used to compensate for the
progressive imbalance between population growth and resources.
Our time is in more than one way the expression of a semiosis
with deep roots in the pragmatic context in which writing
emerged. Engineering dominates today. In trying to define the
semiosis of engineering, i.e. how the relation between work we
associate with engineering and language evolved, we evidence
both continuity-in the form of successive replications-and
discontinuity-in the new condition of the current engineering
work. Our reference can be made to both the dissemination of the
writing system based on the Phoenician alphabet, and the
language of drawing that makes engineering possible.
Phoenician traders supplied materials to the Minoans. The Minoan
burial culture involved the burial of precious objects that
embodied the experience of crafts. These objects were made out
of silver, gold, tin, and lead. In time, increased quantities of
such metals were permanently removed from the market.
Phoenicians, who supplied these materials, had to search farther
and farther for them, using better tools to find and preprocess
the minerals. The involvement of writing and drawing in the
process of compensation between perceived needs and available
resources, and the fact that searches for new resources led to
the dissemination of writing and craftsmanship should be
understood within the dynamics of local economies.
Up to which point such a compensatory action, implying literacy
and engineering skills, is effective, and when it reached its
climax, possibly during the Industrial Revolution, is a question
that can be put only in retrospect. Is there a moment when the
balance was tilted towards the means of expression of and the
communication specific to engineering? If yes, we do not know
this moment; we cannot identify it on historic charts. But once
the potential of literacy to support human practical experiences
of self- constitution in a new pragmatic framework was exhausted,
new means became necessary. To understand the dynamics of the
changes that made the new pragmatic framework of the
civilization of illiteracy necessary is the object of the entire
book. While engineering contributed to them, they are not the
result of this important practical experience, but rather a
cause of how it was and is affected by them. The stream of
diversified experiences that eventually gushed forth through new
languages, the language of design and engineering included,
resulted in the awareness of mediation, which itself became a
goal.