Talk:Post-literate society

This article was nominated for deletion on 6 January 2010 (UTC). The result of the discussion was keep.

This article was nominated for deletion. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination:

Keep, 20 March 2022, see discussion.
keep, 6 January 2010 (UTC), see discussion.
keep, 29 August 2008, see discussion.

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Notability, Original research

Google brings up some results if you search for "postliterate", but nothing that seems related to what is written here. Also, Asemic Magazine seems like it is not really related to this article, either. It's all very weird, but maybe i am missing something. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 22:40, 1 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed

Literacy is a particular interest of mine, and I have never heard of this. I would recommend deletion. Kearnsdm (talk) 16:42, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree

I think this article is notable and needs expansion, not deletion.User:Aintsemic —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.112.121.29 (talk) 16:40, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Expansion necessary and appropriate

Why would an advanced society abandon some form of literacy? Wouldn't a truly-advanced society be even more adept in accessing the past, including its most glorious achievements? Wouldn't people try to expand their literacy into a revived interest in ancient art and literature? A post-industrial society in which people have more leisure time would likely encourage people to expand their literacy into (I say this as an English speaker) into living (i.e. Russian, even if through translation) or ancient (i.e. classical Greek, likewise) literature, just as some do with music and visual art?

People would need literacy just to read the labels and what then pass as consumer guides to intellectual troves (example: Dostoevsky is deep and difficult, but worth it; some other writer is deep and difficult but not worth the effort).

A sane society would encourage greater -- not lesser -- intellectual activity. To be sure, one can get much entertainment and culture without reading (film is a legitimate literary vehicle) -- but one might miss verbal clues (in writing) that add drama to a film. Isn't it significant that Claude Raines visibly drops a bottle of Vichy water, the name "Vichy" (reference not only to bottled water, but also to a discreditable regime) in the movie Casablanca? Only a literate person could appreciate that little device in film.

Illiteracy implies intellectual emptiness, and although I can recognize why a nasty and dictatorial regime might prefer that people not read so that they might not have "troublesome" ideas and not rebel against the ruling elite, I can imagine such a society being very unattractive for other reasons, such as a ruling elite that treats people badly.

We are indeed missing something here. We might be able to have artificial intelligence that translates speech into orders for a machine (as in telling a computer to buy tickets to a game of the New York Yankees and telling a "smart" vehicle "Get me to Yankees game in time to see batting practice") -- but literacy, short of any bio-mechanical devices that can input knowledge directly into someone's consciousness, is likely to persist far longer than even the ability to create. --Paul from Michigan (talk) 21:31, 15 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

External links

This article has four external links, none of which seem to have anything to do with its content:

Postliteracy.org - a site which presents images with steganography
Asemic Magazine - a small site which advertises a magazine of meaningless writing
The New Post-Literate - a personal blog, ineligible per WP:EL
Absurdist Monthly Review - The Writers Magazine of The New Absurdist Movement - doesn't seem to be related to the article's content

I am removing them all. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 14:20, 18 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Origin of phrase

while the idea of a post literate society may have been described in sf works, the first reference i can find to the phrase post literate is marshall mcluhans gutenberg galaxy. i proposed in the AFD that this article be changed to just "Post-literate". added a reference to mcluhan, though i think how i did it is a little sloppy. the bulk of this article is, of course, OR and should be removed if it passes AFD. i think it deserves more than a dicdef, though i could not find reliable sources using the phrase. oh, maybe most of the references will be in films, not texts. hmm, a postliterate WP... all pictures and movies... yikes!Mercurywoodrose (talk) 03:54, 13 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Disturbing?

"In a recent book,The Empire of Illusion, Pulitzer prize–winner Chris Hedges charts the dramatic and disturbing rise of a post-literate society that craves fantasy, ecstasy and illusion."

Why is this disturbing? That doesn't seem NPOV to me. Fenris23 (talk) 04:39, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

you are correct, and i have changed that. i will now do an interpretive dance to explain my changes to this page, posted to youtube:)Mercurywoodrose (talk) 03:56, 25 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]