Post Literacy

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Post Literacy
Are Reading and Writing Things of the Past?
Ontario Library Association February 5, 2005
Michael RidleyChief Information Officer Chief
Librarian University of Guelph
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Agenda The Premise The Course I Taught Key
Concepts Ideas Post Literacy What Does All This
Mean? (if anything)
Post Literacy
Are Reading and Writing Things of the Past?
Ontario Library Association February 5, 2005
Michael RidleyChief Information Officer Chief
Librarian University of Guelph
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First Things First
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Just as the powerful capabilities of literacy
effectively displaced primary orality, so too is
it not only likely but inevitable that literacy
will be displaced by a more powerful tool,
capability or capacity.
The Premise
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Just as the powerful capabilities of literacy
effectively displaced primary orality, so too is
it not only likely but inevitable that literacy
will be displaced by a more powerful tool,
capability or capacity.
The Premise
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• 1st year seminar course
• vehicle for student learning in a small group
  setting
• multidisciplinary focus
• provocative ideas active learning
• research program model

UNIV1200The Past and Future of Ideas Orality,
Literacy and Post Literacy
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The Alphabet
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When simple change becomes transformational
change, the desire for continuity becomes a
dysfunctional mirage. The Mirage of Continuity
(1999) Hawkins Battin
Disruptive Technologies
Disruptive Cognition / Culture
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Eric Havelock Preface to Plato Jack Goody
The Domestication of the Savage Mind Walter Ong
Orality and Literacy Ivan Illich and Barry
Sander ABC the Alphabetization of the Popular
Mind Christopher Dewdney Last Flesh David
Olson The World on Paper Steve Mann Cyborg
Digital Destiny and Human Possibility
The Scholarly Record (Scratch Sniff Version)
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The always on Internet
Collaborative,computer mediated reality
The future of the human is the cyborg
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Steve Mann Cyborg Uof T Professor
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Orality
WrittenLanguage
EvolvingLiteracy
Printed Digital Texts
SecondaryOrality
Post Literacy
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Language
Other Literacies
Image/IconographySound/MusicMovement/Dance
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Orality
Literacy
words and texts
stories and song
speakers (poets) and audience
objects (books) and readers
logic composition
memory performance
passive, internal, persistent, physical (object)
active, external, temporal, physical (body)
rational
magical
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Post literacy is not a decline from literacy
The Nature of Post Literacy
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• clarity precision
• expressive nuanced
• persistent
• time space
• active passive
• a means to understand to provide understanding
• create community enable individual identity
  (collective personal)
• advantageous

The Nature of Post Literacy
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Disruption Suspicion Distrust
Loss Unsophisticated Early adopters Elitism
Power Mainstream
Transition
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Bio-Computing Unused Capacity of the
Brain Telepathy / Collective Unconscious Genetic
Memory Post Humans
Candidates for Post Literacy
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Neutrally interfaced computer technology
complementing natural telepathysupported by
genetic memory.
Post Literacy
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Candidates for Post Literacy
Aliens
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Language is a virus from outer space.
Agenda
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Literacy is over Profound new capability
capacity A very difficult period of transition
What, if anything, does all this mean?
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Post Literacy
Comments? Questions?
Are Reading and Writing Things of the Past?
Ontario Library Association February 5, 2005
Michael RidleyChief Information Officer Chief
Librarian, University of Guelph