Language is a form of social memory. When saying something or
listening to some utterance, we assume a uniform use of words
and of higher level linguistic entities. As stored testimony to
similar practical experiences, language, stabilized in literacy,
became a medium for averaging them. The patterns of human
relations captured in language make people aware, in retrospect,
of the relevance of these patterns to human efficiency. So it
seems that we constitute ourselves as our own observations about
how we interact. These observations are identified as cognition,
because it is through interaction that we know each other and
know how, what, and when our immediate and less immediate needs
are satisfied. The paradigm of literacy asserts that human
self-constitution takes place in language, moreover that it could
effectively happen only in language, expressed in written forms
and made available through reading. Indeed, knowledge was
derived from praxis implying human interaction that integrated
language-based exchanges of information. This knowledge shaped
political, ideological, religious, and economic experiences, as
well as efforts to improve the technology used, and even broaden
the scientific perspective. The dimension of future is intrinsic
to life, from where it extends to language and literacy, as it
extends to artifacts, work, and pragmatic expectations.
The practical experience of language, as any other semiotic
practical experience, embodies agreements regarding the nature
and condition of whatever is constituted in language, human
identity included. The projection of the biological and cultural
characteristics on the world of our life and action establishes
elements of reference. The ability to see, hear, and smell, and
the ability to use tools are acknowledged as humans interact.
Ability and performance differ widely. Self-evaluation and
evaluation by others in the process of defining and achieving
goals of common interest are quite distinct. Language mediates,
hence it makes commitments part of the experience. When these
are not carried through, language can become a substitute medium
for confrontation.
Experiences of agreement and experiences of confrontation are
part of the patterns of interrelationship that define how the
language of individuals and the language of the community are
related. Socialization of language leads to paradoxical
situations: humans self-constituted in the language experience
perceive their own language as though confrontation is not among
themselves, but among their languages. Only a few years ago, we
heard about how much Americans and Russians liked each other,
although the language of politics and ideology was one of
conflict. Now we hear how Ossies (East Germans) and Wessies
(West Germans) have strong feelings about each other (one side
is described as lazy, the other as arrogant; one side as
cultivated, the other as ignoramuses; some as honest, the others
as corrupt) although the language they both share is the same
(though not quite). Iranians and Arabs, Armenians and
Georgians, and Serbs and Croats could add to this subject more
than we want to know about the language of prejudice.
Shortly before Malthus issued his equation of population growth
in relation to the growth of subsistence means, Rousseau stated
a law of the inverse proportion between size of population and
political freedom. Rousseau ascertained that the strength of
those exercising power over others increases as the number of
those subjected to power increases. The inverse proportion has
to do with the influence each individual has in the political
process-the more people, the weaker each voice. Scale is
critical, but so is understanding the relation between the
underlying structure of the pragmatics that defines the role of
language and how this role is carried out. Practical experiences
of power concentration are supported by literacy, whose implicit
structure and expectation is centralism and representation.
Literacy generates instances of conflict as well as institutions
that regulate the nature of agreements and disagreements.
Bureaucracy, the expression of these institutions, is the
offspring of the incestuous relation between literacy and
democracy.
A new scale of humankind, for which literacy-based practical
experiences are not adequate, and within which democracy-the
power of the people-can no longer be exercised (as Rousseau
pointed out), poses many challenges. Among them: What, if
anything, should replace literacy? What could replace democracy?
How do we free ourselves from the choking grip of bureaucracy?
Even before attempting an answer, the notion that the cultural
experience of literacy and the social experience of democracy
have reached their potential and are due for replacements has to
be understood.
In a different vein, the understanding that literacy participates
in power, of which people become aware in a given cultural and
social context, triggers another reaction: means of expression
and communication different from those originating under the
aegis of literacy participate in pragmatic processes that result
in access to power. It is not what a political leader says, but
how. Powerful images, sophisticated directing, and inspired
stage design or selection of backdrops become the message itself.
This is why "The message is the medium," a not irreverent
reversal of McLuhan's famous formula, phrases the altered nature
of the relation between language and the world. Interactions in
the networked world exemplify this rephrasing even better. The
redefined relationship between the many languages of our new
practical experiences and reality is expressed in the means and
values of the civilization of illiteracy.
Written into the pompous architecture of Mitterand's palaces and
monuments in Paris, and into the "new" Berlin reflecting the
medieval notion of centralized power-to the tune of hundreds of
billions of dollars-the message of literacy is turned into the
medium of brick-and-mortar. In an age of task distribution and
decentralization, the appropriate alternative is virtual
environments and an advanced infrastructure for access to
cognition. "The message is the medium" translates into the
requirement of overcoming infatuation with the past, never mind
trying to reinvent it. The statement demands that we create
alternative media that support the empowerment of individuals,
not the further consolidation of power structures that were
relevant in the past but which prevent the unfolding of the
future.