Expectations stemming from the civilization of literacy differ in
their condition from those of the cognitive age. Infinitely more
chances open continuously, but the risks associated with them
are at least of the same order of magnitude as the changes.
Walking along a road is less risky than riding a horse,
bicycling, or driving a car. Flying puts the farthest point from
us on the globe within our reach, but the risks involved in
flight are also greater. Cognitive resources integrated in our
endeavors contribute to an efficiency higher than that provided
by hydropower, steam engines, and electric energy. With each new
step in the direction of their increased participation in our
praxis, we take a chance.
There is no reason to compare simulations of the most complex and
daring projects to successful or failed attempts to build new
cities, modify nature, or create artifacts conceived under
cognitive assumptions of lesser complexity than that achieved in
our time. A failed connection on today's Internet, or a major
scam on the Web, should be expected in these early stages of the
pragmatic framework to which they belong. But we should at no
moment ignore the fact that cognitive breakdowns are much more
than the crash of an operating system or the breakdown of a
network application.
We learn more about ourselves in the practical experiences of
constituting the post-literate languages of science, art, and
the humanities than we have learned during the entire history of
humankind. These languages-very complex sign systems indeed-
integrate knowledge accumulated in a great variety of
experiences, as well as genetically inherited and rationally and
emotionally based cognitive procedures. Changes in the very
fabric of the human being involved in these practical experiences
are reflected in the increased ability to handle abstraction,
refocus from the immediate to the mediated, and enter interhuman
commitments that result from the practice of unprecedented means
of expression, communication, and signification.
During the process, we have reached some of our most critical
limitations. Knowledge is deeper, but more segmented. To use
Steiner's words once again, there is a "gap of silence" between
many groups of people. Our own efficiency made us increasingly
vulnerable to drives that recall more of the primitive stages of
humankind than all that we believed we accumulated through the
humanities. The new means are changing politics and economic
activity, but first of all they are changing the nature of human
transactions. And they are changing our sense of future.
Let us not forget Big Brother, not to be brushed away just
because the year 1984 has come and gone, but to be understood
from a viewpoint Orwell could not have had. If the means in
question are used to monitor us, too bad. In the emerging
structures of human interaction, to exercise control, as done in
previous societies, is simply not possible. It is not for the
love of the Internet that this constitutes a non-regulated domain
of human experiences. Rather it is because by its nature, the
Internet cannot be controlled in the same way our driving,
drinking, and social behavior are controlled. The opportunity
for transparency afforded by systems that replace the domination
of literacy is probably too important to be missed or misused.
The dynamics of the civilization of illiteracy results from its
implicit condition. We can affect some of its parameters, but not
its global behavior. For instance, the integration required by
parallelism and the massive distribution of tasks cannot take
place successfully if the network of interactions is mined by
gates, filters, and veils of secrecy, by hierarchic control
mechanisms, and by authorization procedures. Imagine if a
person's arms, eyes, ears, or nostrils had to obtain permission
to participate in the self-constitution of the whole human
being. Individuals in the new pragmatic context are the eyes,
arms, brains, and nostrils of the complex human entity involved
in an experience that integrates everyone's participation. It is
an intense effort, not always as rewarding as we expect it to
be, a self-testing endeavor whose complexity escapes individual
realization. Feedback loops are the visible part of the broader
system, but not its essential part.
The authenticity of each and every act of our self-making
contributes to the integrity of the overall process-our
ascertainment through what we do. Relative insularity and a
definite alienation from the overall of the system's
goals-meeting higher demands by higher performance-are part of
the picture described. Complemented by a sense of
empowerment-the ability to self-determine-and a variety of new
forms of human interaction, the resulting human pragmatics can be
more humane than the pragmatics of the huge factories of
industrial society-commuters rushing from home to job to
shopping mall, to entertainment. It is not Big Brother who will
be watching. Each and every individual is part of the effort,
entitled to know everything about it, indeed wanting to know and
caring. Without transparency that we can influence, the effort
will not succeed. We are our own active badge. The record is of
interest in order to justify the use of our time and energy, but
foremost to learn about those instances when we are less
faithful to ourselves than our newly acquired liberty affords.
It is much easier to submit to outside authority, as literacy
educates us to do. But once self-control and self-evaluation, as
feedback mechanisms under our own control become the means of
optimization, the burden is shifted from Big Brother,
bureaucracies, and regulations to the individual.
It is probably useful at this point to suggest a framework for
action in at least some of the basic activities affected by the
change brought about in the civilization of illiteracy. The
reason for these suggestions is at hand. We know that literate
education is not appropriate, but this observation remains a
critical remark. What we need is a guide for action. This has to
translate into positive attitudes, and into real attempts to
meet the challenge of present and shape the future in full
awareness of forces at work.