Scholars have looked at literacy from all these perspectives. In doing so, they have foisted upon the understanding of literacy interpretations so diverse and so contradictory that to follow them is to enter a maze from which there is no escape. One of Will Rogers' lines was paraphrased as: "We are all illiterate, only about different things." The formula deserves closer examination because it defines another characteristic of the context for understanding the relative illiteracy of our times. The degree of illiteracy is difficult to quantify, but the result is easy to notice. Everything carried into the self-constitution of the individual as warrior, lover, athlete, family member, educator or educated in literacy-based pragmatics is being replaced by illiterate means. Nobody expected that an individual who reads Tolstoy or Shakespeare will be a better cook, or devise better military plans, or even be a better lover. Nevertheless, the characteristics of literacy affected practically all pragmatic experiences, conferring upon them a unity and coherence we can only look back upon with nostalgia. Champions of sexual encounters, as much as innovators in new technologies and Olympic athletes are extremely efficient in their respective domains. Peak performance increases as the average falls in the range of mediocrity and sub- mediocrity. In this book I will examine many aspects of literacy pertinent to what is usually associated with it: the publications people write and read, communication at the individual and social levels, as well as many aspects of human activity that we do not necessarily consider in relation to literacy-military, sports, sex and family, eating-but which nevertheless were influenced by the pragmatic framework that made literacy possible and necessary.
With the evident demise of philosophy as the science of sciences, began fragmentation of knowledge. Doubt that a common instrument of access to and dissemination of knowledge exists is replaced by certitude that it does not. A so-called third culture, in the opinion of the author who brought it to public attention, "consists of rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives" in ways different from those of literary intellectuals. This is not C.P. Snow's third culture of scientists capable of communicating with non-scientific intellectuals, but the illiterate scientific discourse that brings fascinating notions into the mainstream, via powerful metaphors and images (albeit in a trivialized manner). This is why the relation between science and literacy, as well as between philosophy and literacy, will be examined with the intention to characterize the philosophy and science of the civilization of illiteracy.
But are we really equipped with the means of exploration and evaluation of this wide-ranging change? Aren't we captive to language and literacy, and thus to the philosophic and scientific explanations based on them? We know that the system in place in our culture is the result of the logocratic view adopted. The testing of skills rated by score is to a great extent a measure of comprehension characteristic of the civilization of literacy. The new pragmatic framework requires skills related not only to language and literacy, but also to images, sounds, textures, motion, and virtual space and time. Knowing this, we have to address the relation between a relatively static medium and dynamic media. We should look into how literacy relates to the visual, in general, and, in particular, to the controversial reality of television, of interactive multimedia, of artificial images, of networking and virtual reality. These are all tasks of high order, requiring a broad perspective and an unbiased viewpoint.
Most important is the comprehension of the structural implications of literacy. An understanding of the framework that led to literacy, and of the consequences that the new pragmatic framework of existence has on all aspects of our lives will help us understand how literacy influenced them. I refer specifically to religion, family, state, and education. In a world giving up the notion of permanency, God disappears for quite a number of people. Still, there are many more churches, denominations, sects, and other religious factions (atheist and neo-pagan included) than at any other time. In the United States of America, people change life partners 2.8 times during their lifespan (if they ever constitute a family), and calculate the financial aspects of getting married and having children with the same precision that they use to calculate the expected return on an investment. The state has evolved into a corporation regulating the business of the nation, and is now judged on its economic achievements. Presidents of states act as super-peddlers of major industries on whose survival employment depends. These heads of state are not shy about giving up the ideals anchored in literate discourse (e.g., human rights). But they will raise a big fuss when it comes to copyright infringement, especially of software. The irony is that copyright is difficult to define in respect to digital originals. Through the literacy model, the state became a self- preserving bureaucratic machine rarely akin to the broad variety of options brought about by the pragmatic framework of the civilization of illiteracy.
Many more people than previous records mention become (or remain) illiterates after finishing the required years of schooling-a minimum of ten years-and even after graduating from college. Some people know how to read; even how to write, but opt for scanning TV channels, playing games, attending sports events, or surfing the Internet. Aliteracy is also part of the broader change in the status of literacy. Decisions to forego reading and writing are decisions in favor of different means of expression and communication. The new generation is more proficient in video games than in orthography. This generation will be involved in high-efficiency practical experiences structurally similar to the interactive toy and far removed from the expectation of correct writing. The Internet shapes the choices of the new generation in terms of what they want to know, how, when, and for what purpose more than newspapers, books, and magazines, and even more than radio or television does. And even more than schools and colleges do. Through its vast and expanding means and offerings, the Internet connects the individual to the globe, instead of only talking about globality. Networking, at many levels and in many ways, is related to the characteristics of our pragmatic framework. As rudimentary as it still is, networking excludes everything that is not fast- paced and to the point.
Can all these examples, part of the context of the discussion of literacy in our changing world, be interpreted as being in causal relation to the decline of literacy? That is, the less people are knowledgeable in reading and writing, or choose not to read or write, the less they believe in God or the more pagan they want to be? The more often they divorce, the less they marry or have children? The more they want or accept a bureaucratic machine to handle their problems, the more TV programs they watch and the more electronic games they play, the more they surf the infinite world of networks? No, not along this line of one-dimensional, linear, simplistic form of determinism. A multiplicity of factors, and a multiplicity of layers need to be considered. They are, however, rooted in the pragmatic framework of our continuous self- constitution. It is exhibited through the dynamics of shorter and faster interactions. It is embodied in the ever wider choices of ascertaining our identity. It takes the appearance of availabilities, fragmentation and global integration, of increased mediation. The dynamics described corresponds to the higher efficiency that a larger scale of human activity demands. To call attention to the multi-dimensionality of the process and to the many interdependencies, which we can finally uncover with the help of new technologies, is a first step. To evince their non-linearity, reflecting the meshing between what can be seen as deterministic and what is probably non-deterministic is another step in the argument of the book.
Without basing our discussion on human pragmatics, it would be impossible to explain why, despite all the effort and money societies invest in education, and all the time allocated for education-sometimes over a quarter of a lifetime-despite research of cognitive processes pertinent to literacy, people wind up less literate, but, surprisingly, not at all less efficient. Some would argue-the late Alan Bloom, a crusader for culture and literacy, indeed a brilliant writer of the epilogue of human culture and nostalgia for it, already did-that without literacy, we are less effective as human beings. The debate over such arguments requires that we acknowledge changes in the status of human beings and of human societies, and that we understand what makes such changes unavoidable.
The wise fox
The world as it stands today, especially the industrialized world, is fundamentally different from the world of any yesteryear, the last decade and century, not to mention the past that seems more the time of story than of history. Alan Bloom's position, embraced by many intellectuals, is rooted in the belief that people cannot be effective unless they build on the foundation of historically confirmed values, in particular the great books. But we are at a point of divergences with no noticeably privileged direction, but with many, many options. This is not a time of crisis, although some want us to believe the contrary and are ready to offer their remedies: back to something (authority, books, some primitive stage of no-ego, or of the mushroom, i.e., psychedelic drugs, back to nature); or fast forward to the utopia of technocracy, the information age, the service society, even virtual reality or artificial life.
Humans are heuristic animals. Our society is one of creativity and diversity, operating on a scale of human interaction to which we exponentially add new domains: outer space, whose dimensions can be measured only in light years, and whose period of observation extends over lifetimes; the microcosmos, mirroring the scale in the opposite direction of infinitesimal differentiations; the new continents of man-made materials, new forms of energy, genetically designed plants and animals, new genetic codes, and virtual realities to experience new spaces, new times, and new forms of mediation. Networking, which at its current stage barely suggests things to come, can only be compared to the time electricity became widely available. Cognitive energy exchanged through networks and focused on cooperative endeavors is part of what lies ahead as we experience exponential growth on digital networks and fast learning curves of efficient handling of their potential.
The past corresponds to a pragmatic framework well adapted to the survival and development of humankind in the limited world of direct encounters or limited mediations. In terms pertinent to a civilization built around the notion of literacy, the current lower levels of literacy can be seen as symptomatic of a crisis, or even a breakdown. But what defines the new pragmatic context is the shift from a literacy- centered model to one of multiple, interconnected, and interconditioned, distributed literacies. It is well justified to repeat that some of the most enlightened minds overlook the pragmatics of bygone practice. Challenged, confused, even scared by the change, they call for a journey to the past: back to tradition, to discipline, to the ethics of our forefathers, to old-time religion and the education that grew out of it, to permanence, and hopefully to stability. Even those who wholeheartedly espouse evolutionary and revolutionary models seem to have a problem when it comes to literacy. All set to do away with authority, they have no qualms about celebrating the imperialism of the written word. Other minds confess to difficulties in coping with a present so promising and, at the same time, so confusing in its structural contradictions. What we experience, from the extreme of moral turpitude to a disquieting sense of mediocrity and meaninglessness, nourishes skeptical, if not fatalistic, visions. The warning is out (again): We will end up destroying humankind! Yet another part of the living present accepts the challenge without caring about the implications it entails. The people in this group give up their desire to understand what happens, as long as this makes life exciting and rewarding. Hollywood thrives on this. So do the industries of digital smoke- and-mirrors, always a step from fame, and not much farther from oblivion. Addresses on the Internet fade as quickly as they are set up. The most promising links of yesterday show up on the monitor as a "Sorry" message, as meaningful as their short- lived presence was. Arguing with success is a sure recipe for failure. Success deserves to be celebrated in its authentic forms that change the nature of human existence in our universe.
The future suggested in the labels technocracy, information age, and service society might capture some characteristics of today's world, but it is limited and limiting. This future fails to accommodate the development of human activity at the new scale in terms of population, resources, adaptation, and growth it has reached. Within this model, its proponents preserve as the underlying structure the current set of dependencies among the many parts involved in human activity, and a stubborn deterministic view of simplistic inclination. Unreflected celebration of technocracy as the sole agent of change must be treated with the same suspicion as its demonization. The current participation of technology in human activity is indeed impressive. So are the extent of information processing and information mining, and the new relation between productive activities and services. To make sense of disparate data and from them form new productive endeavors is a formidable task. Science, in turn, made available enormously challenging theories and extremely refined models of the world.
But after all is done and said, these are only particular aspects of a much more encompassing process. The result is a pragmatic framework of a new condition. Highly mediated work, distributed tasks, parallel modes, and generalized networking of rather loosely coordinated individual experiences define this condition. Within this framework, the connection between input (for instance, work) and output (what results) is of a different order of magnitude tfrom that between the force applied on a lever and the outcome; or that between the energy necessary to accomplish useful tasks through engines or electric, or pneumatic devices, no matter how efficient, and the result. In addition, even the distinction between input and output becomes fuzzy. The wearable computer provides interoperability and interconnectedness-an increase in a person's heart rate can be a result of an increase in physical exertion or cause for communicating with a doctor's office or for alerting the police station (if an accident takes place). It might be that the next interaction will involve our genetic code.
The capacity for language and the ability to understand its various implications are only relatively interdependent, and thus only relatively open to scrutiny and understanding. This statement, as personal as it sounds, and as much as it expresses probably less resignation than uncertainty, is crucial to the integrity of this entire enterprise. Indeed, once within a language, one is bound to look at the world surrounding oneself from the perspective of that language as the medium for partial self-constitution and evaluation. Participating in its dynamics affects what I am able to see and describe. This affects also what I am no longer able to perceive, what escapes my perception, or even worse, filters it to the point that I see only my own thoughts. This dual identity-observer and integral part of the observed phenomena-raises ethical, axiological, and epistemological aspects almost impossible to reconcile. Since every language is a projection of ourselves-as participants in the human experience, yet as distinct instantiations of that experience-we do not see the world so much as ourselves in relation to it, ourselves in establishing our culture, and again ourselves in taming and appropriating the universe around us. The fox in Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince says it much better: "One only understands the things one tames."
"Between us the rift"
Huge industrial complexes where an immense number of workers participate in the production of goods, and densely populated urban centers gravitating around factories, make up the image characteristic of industrial society. This image is strikingly different from the new reality of interconnected, yet decentralized, individual activities going well beyond telecommuting. Various mediating elements contribute to increasingly efficient practical experiences of human self-constitution. The computer is one of the varied embodiments of these mediating elements, but by no means the only one. Through its functions, such as calculation, word, image, and information processing, and control of manufacturing, it introduces many layers between individuals and the object of their actions. The technology of interconnecting provides means for distributive task strategies. It also facilitates parallel modes of productive work. This is a world of progressive decentralization and interoperative possibilities. All kinds of machines can be an address in this interconnected world. Their operations can range from design tasks to computer-aided manufacturing. Distributed work and cognitive functions pertinent to it afford practical experiences qualitatively different from the mechanical sequencing of tasks as we know it from industrial modes of production.
Obviously, large portions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as well as part of the European and North American continents, do not necessarily fit this description in detail. Industrial activities still constitute the dominant practical experience in the world. Although nomadic and jungle tribes are part of this integrated world, the Industrial Revolution has not yet reached them all. In some cases, the stages leading to agriculture have not yet been attained. In view of the global nature of human life and activity today, I submit that despite the deep disparity in the economic and social evolution of various regions of the world, it is plausible to assume that centralized modes of production peculiar to industrial economies are not a necessary development. Efficiency expectations corresponding to the global scale of human activity can be reached only by development strategies different from those embodied in the pragmatic framework of industrial activity. It is therefore probable that countries, and even subcontinents, not affected by the Industrial Revolution will not go through it. Planners with an ecological bent even argue that developing countries should not take the path that led industrial nations to augment their population's living standard to the detriment of the environment or by depleting natural resources (A German Manifest, 1992).
Industrial production and the related social structures rely on literacy. Edmund Carpenter formulated this quite expressively: "Translated into gears and levers, the book became machine. Translated into people, it became army, chain of command, assembly line…." His description, made in broad strokes, is to the point. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, children and women became part of the labor market. For the very limited operation one had to perform, no literacy was necessary; and women and children were not literate. Still, the future development of the industrial society could not take place without the dissemination of literacy skills. For instance, industry made possible the invention, in 1830, of the steel pen indispensable to the compulsory elementary education that was later instituted. The production of steel needles seemed to extend domesticity, but actually created the basis for the sweat trades following what Louis Mumford called carboniferous capitalism. Gaslight and electricity expanded the time available for the dissemination of literacy skills. Housing improvements made possible the building of the individual library. George Steiner sees this as a turning point in the sense that a private context of the experience of the book was created.
As far as national structures were concerned, phenomena characteristic of the Industrial Revolution cannot be understood outside the wider context of the formation and consolidation of nations. Affirmation of national identity is a process intimately connected to the values and functions of literacy. The production process of the industrial age of mechanical machinery and electric power required not brute force, but qualified force. Administrative and management functions required more literacy than work on the assembly line. But literacy projected its characteristics onto the entire activity, thus making a literate workforce desirable. The market it generated projected the condition of the industry in the structure of its transactions. The requirements for qualified work expanded to requirements for qualified market activities and resulted in the beginnings of marketing and advertising. That market was based on the recognition of national boundaries, i.e., boundaries of efficiency, self-sufficiency, and future growth offering markets of a size and complexity adequate to industrial output. Nations replaced the coarse fragmentation of the world. They were no longer, as Jean-Marie Guéhenno notices, a disguise of tribal structures, but a political space within which democracy could be established.
Progression from competing individual life and temporary congregation in an environment of survival of the fittest to tribal, communal, local, confederate, and national life is paralleled by progression in the forms and methods of human integration. The global scale of human activity characteristic of our age is not an extension of the linear, deterministic relations between those constituting a valid human entity and the life-support system, called environment, that structurally define industrial society. Discontinuity in numbers (of people, resources, expectations, etc.), in the nature of the relations among people, in the forms of mediations that define human practical experiences is symptomatic of the depth and breadth of change. The end of nations, of democracy even, might be far off, but this end is definitory of the chasm before us. The United Nations, which does not yet comprise the entire world, is a collection of over 197 nations, and increasing. Some are only island communities, or newly proclaimed independent countries brought about by social and political movements. Of the over 240 distinct territories, countries, and protectorates, very few (if any) are truly autarchic entities. Despite never before experienced integration, our world is less the house of nations and discrete alliances among them, and more the civilization of a species in firm control (too firm, as some perceive) of other species.
Within the world, we know that there are people still coming out of an age of natural economy based on hunting, foraging, fishing, and rudimentary agriculture. While barter and the minimal language of survival is the only market process in such places, in reality, the world is already involved in global transactions. Markets are traded in their entirety, more often than not without the knowledge of those comprising these markets. This only goes to show again the precarious nature of national structures. National independence, passionately fought for, is less a charter for the future than the expression of the memory of the past (authentic or fake). Selling or buying extends to the entire economy, which while still at a stage difficult to entirely explain, is bound to change in a rhythm difficult to cope with by those supposed to control it, but inescapable in the context of world-wide market. That literacy and national identity share in this condition should not surprise anyone.
Malthus revisited
The Malthusian principle (1798) related growth of populations (geometric) to food supply increases (arithmetic): "Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio." The weakness of the principle is probably its failure to acknowledge that the equation of mankind has more than the two variables it considers: population and food supply. The experience of extensive use of natural resources, in particular through farming, is only one among an increasing number of experiences. Human beings constitute their own reality not only as one of biological needs, but also of cultural expectations, growing demands, and creativity. These eventually affect changes in what were believed to be primary needs and instincts. In many ways, a great deal of previously acknowledged sources of protein are exhausted. But in an ever more impressive proportion, the acceptable realm of sources of nutrition-proteins included-has been expanded so as to include the artificial. Hunting and gathering wild plants (not to mention scavenging, which seems to predate hunting) were appropriate when linear, sequential strategies of survival defined human behavior; so were herding and agriculture, a continuation of foraging under circumstances of changed subsistence strategies.
Language was formed, and then stabilized, in connection to this linear form of praxis. Linearity simply reflects the fact that one person is less effective than two, but also that one's needs are smaller than those of several. The experience of self- constitution in language preserves linearity. This preservation of linearity extends as long as the scale of the community and its needs and wants allowed for proportional interaction among its individuals and the environment of their existence. Industrial society is probably the climax of this optimization effort.
If the issue were only to feed mankind, the population census (over five billion people on record as of the moment these pages are being written, though less than four billion when I started) and the measure of resources would not yet indicate a new scale. But the issue is to accommodate geometrically growing populations and exponentially (i.e., non-linearly) diversifying expectations. Such expectations relate to a human being celebrating higher average ages, and an extended period of active life. We change anatomically, not necessarily for the better: we see and hear less well and have lower physical abilities. Our cognitive behavior and our patterns of social interaction change, too. These changes reflect, among other things, the transition from direct interaction and co-presence to indirect, mediated forms of the practical self-constitution of the human being.
The sequential nature of language, in particular its embodiment in literacy, no longer suits human praxis as its universal measure. The strategies of linearization introduced through the experience of literacy were acceptable when the resulting efficiency accommodated lower and less differentiated expectations. They are now replaced by more efficient, intrinsically non-linear strategies made possible by literacies structurally different from those rooted in the practice of so-called natural language. Accordingly, literacy loses its primacy. New literacies emerge. Instead of a stable center and limited choice, a distributed and variable configuration of centers and wide choice connect and disconnect areas of common or disjoint interest. There are still national ambitions, huge factories to be built, cities to be erected and others to be expanded, highways to be widened in order to accommodate more intercity traffic, and airports to be constructed so that more airplanes can be used for national and international travel. The inertia of past pragmatics has not yet been annihilated by the dynamics of a fundamental change of direction. Still, an integrated, yet decentralized, universe of work and living has been taking shape and will continue to do so. Interconnection made possible by digital technology, first of all, opens a wide range of possibilities for reshaping social life, political institutions, and our ability to design and produce goods. Our own ability to mediate, to integrate parts and services resulting from specialized activities is supported by machines that enhance our cognitive characteristics.
Captives to literacy
Probably the most shocking discovery we sometimes make is that, in order to be able to undertake new experiences, we need to forget, to break the curse of literate memory, and to immerse ourselves in the structurally amnesiac systems of signs corresponding to and addressing our senses. Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Earth's Holocaust" was prophetic in this sense. In this parable, the people of a new world (obviously the United States of America) bring all the books they inherited from the old world to a great bonfire. Theirs is not an exercise in mindless book-burning. They conscientiously discard all the rules and ideas passed down through millennia that governed the world and the life they left behind. Old ideas, as well as new ones, would have to prove their validity in the new context before they would be accepted. Indeed, the awareness brought about by theories of the physical world, of the mind, of our own biogenetic condition made possible practical experiences of self-constitution that are not like anything experienced by humans before our time. The realization of relativity, of the speed of light, of micro- and macro-structures, of dynamic forces and non-linearity is already translated in new structures of interactions. Our systems of interconnection- through electric energy, telephone (wired and cellular), radio, television, communication, computer networks-function at speeds comparable to that of light. They integrate dynamic mechanisms inspired by genetics, physics, molecular biology, and our knowledge of the micro- and macro-structure.
Our life cycle seems to accept two different synchronizing mechanisms: one corresponding to our natural condition (days, nights, seasons), the other corresponding to the perceived scale and to our striving towards efficiency. The two are less and less dependent, and efficiency seems to dominate nature. Discovery of the world in its expanded comprehensive geographic dimensions required ships and planes. It also required the biological effort to adapt and the intellectual effort to understand various kinds of differences. In outer space, this adaptation proves to be even more difficult. In a world in a continuous flux of newer and newer distinctions, people constitute, instead of one permanent and encompassing literacy, several literacies, none of which bears the status of (quasi)eternal. Differentiation of human experience is so far reaching that it is impossible to reduce the variety to one literate language.
In the process of building rational, interpretive methods and establishing a body of knowledge that can be tested and practically applied, people often discard what did not fit in the theories they advanced, what did not obey the laws that these theories expressed. This was a necessary methodology that resulted in the progress we enjoy today. But it was also a deceptive method because what could not be explained was omitted. Where literacy was instilled, non-linguistic aspects-such as the irreducible world of magic, mystery, the esoteric (to name a few)-were done away with. Commenting upon The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Illich and Sanders pointed out that there is a whole world in Twain's novel that is inaccessible to the illiterate, but also a world of folklore and superstition that cannot be understood by those hostage to the beautiful kingdom of literacy. Folklore in many countries, and superstition, and mystery in all the varieties corresponding to human practical self-constitution are definitely areas from which we might gain better insight into life past, present, and future. They are part of the context and should not be left out, even though they may belong to the epoch before literacy.
All in all, since language was and still is the most comprehensive testimony to (and participant in) our experience as human beings, we may want to see whether its crisis says something about our own permanence and our own prejudices concerning the species. After all, why, and based on what arguments, do we see ourselves as the only permanence in the universe and the highest possible achievement of evolution? Literacy freed us in many respects. But it also made us prisoners of a number of prejudices, not the least a projection of self-awareness in direct contradiction to our own experience of never-ending change in the world.
The Epitome of the Civilization of Illiteracy
In the opinion of foe and friend alike, America (the name under which the United States of America, appropriating the identifier of the two continents comprising the New World) epitomizes many of the defining characteristics of today's world: market oriented, technologically driven, living on borrowed means (financial and natural resources), competitive to the extreme of promoting adversarial relations, and submitting, in the name of democracy and tolerance, to mediocrity, demagoguery, and opportunism. Americans are seen as boastful, boorish, unrealistic, naive, primitive, hypocritical, and obsessed with money. Even to some of its most patriotic citizens, the USA appears to be driven by political opportunism, corruption, and bigotry. As still others perceive the USA, it is captive to militarism and prey to the seductive moral poison of its self-proclaimed supremacy. At times it looks like the more it fails in some of its policies, the more it wants to hear declarations of gratitude and hymns of glory, as in John Adams' lines: "The eastern nations sink, their glory ends/ And empires rise where sun descends." To the peoples just awaking from the nightmare of communism, the American political slogans have a familiar, though frightening, self-delusive ring.
On the other hand, Americans are credited with extraordinary accomplishments in technology, science, medicine, the arts, literature, sports, and entertainment. They are appreciated as friendly, open, and tolerant. Their willingness to engage in altruistic projects (programs for the poor and for children all over the world), indeed free from discrimination, makes for a good example to people of other nations. Patriotism does not prevent Americans from being critical of their own country. To the majority of the world, America represents a vivid model of liberal democracy in action within a federation of states united by a political system based on expectations of balance among local, state, and federal functions.
Jean Jacques Servan-Schreiber once made headlines writing about the American challenge (Le Défi Américain), more or less about the danger of seeing the world Americanized. Downtown Frankfurt (on the river Main) is called Mainhattan because its skyscrapers recall those of the island between the Hudson and East Rivers. The Disneyland near Paris, more of an import (the French government wanted it badly) than an export product, was called a "cultural Chernobyl." Tourists from all over the crumbled Soviet Empire are no longer taken to Lenin's Mausoleum but to Moscow's McDonald's. The Japanese, reluctant to import American-made cars and supercomputers, or to open their markets to agricultural goods (except marbled beef), will bend over backwards for baseball. Add to all this the symbolism of blue jeans, Madonna or Heavy Metal (as music or comic books), Coca-Cola, the television series Dallas, the incessant chomping on chewing gum and bubble-gum popping, Texan boots, and the world-wide sneaker craze, and you have an image of the visible threat of Americanization. But appearance is deceitful.
Taken out of their context, these and many other Americanized aspects of daily life are only exotic phenomena, easy to counteract, and indeed subject to counteraction. Italians protested the culture of fast food near the Piazza d'Espagna in Rome (where one fast food establishment rented space) by giving out free spaghetti carbonara and pizza. (They were unaware of the irony in this: the biggest exporter of pizza restaurants is no longer Italy, but the USA.) The rightist Russian movement protested McDonald's by touting national dishes, the good old high-calorie menu of times when physical effort was much greater than in our days (even in that part of the world). The Germans push native Lederhosen and Dirndls over blue jeans. The German unions protest attempts to address structural problems in their economy through diminishing social benefits with a slogan that echoes like a hollow threat: American conditions will be met by a French response, by which they mean that strikes will paralyze the country. The Japanese resisted the Disney temptation by building their own lands of technological marvels. When an athlete born in America, naturalized as Japanese, won the traditional Sumo wrestling championship, the Japanese judges decided that this would be his last chance, since the sport requires, they stated, a spirituality (translated by demeanor) that a foreign-born sportsman cannot have.
On closer examination, Americanization runs deeper than what any assortment of objects, attitudes, values, and imitated behavior tell us. It addresses the very core of human activity in today's global community. It is easy to understand why America appears to embody efficiency reached at the expense of many abandoned values: respect for authority, for environment, for resources, even human resources, and ultimately human values. The focus of the practical experience through which American identity is constituted is on limitless expectations regarding social existence, standard of living, political action, economic reward, even religious experience. Its encompassing obsession is freedom, or at least the appearance of freedom. Whatever the pragmatics affords becomes the new expectation and is projected as the next necessity. The right to affluence, as relative as affluence is in American society, is taken for granted, never shadowed by the thought that one's wealth and well-being might come at the expense of someone else's lack of opportunity. Competitive, actually adversarial, considerations prevail, such as those manifest in the morally dubious practices accepted by the legal and political systems. "To the victor go the spoils" is probably the most succinct description of what this means in real life.
The American way of life has been a hope and promise for people all over the world. The mixed feelings they have towards America does not necessarily reflect this. The entire world is probably driven by the desire for efficiency that makes such a standard of living possible more than by the pressure to copy the American style (of products, living, politics, behavior, etc.). This desire corresponds to a pragmatics shaped by the global scale of humankind, and by the contemporary dynamics of human self-constitution. Each country faces the battle between efficiency and culture (some going back thousands of years), in contrast to the USA, whose culture is always in status nascendi. The American anxiety over the current state of literacy is laden with a nostalgia for a tradition never truly established and a fear of a future never thought through. It is, consequently, of more than documentary interest to understand how America epitomizes a civilization that has made literacy obsolete.
For the love of trade
As a country formed by unending waves of immigration, America can be seen, superficially though, as a civilization of many parallel literacies. Ethnic neighborhoods are still a fact of life. Here one finds stores where only the native language is spoken, with newspapers printed in Greek, Hungarian, German, Italian, Ukrainian, Farsi, Armenian, Hebrew, Romanian, Russian, Arabic, Japanese, Mandarin, Korean. Cable TV caters to these groups, and so do many importers of products reminiscent of some country where "food tastes real" and goods "last forever." All of these carried-over literacies are, in final analysis, means of self-constitution, bridges between cultures that will be burned by the third generation. In practicing the literacy of origins, human beings constitute themselves as split personalities between two pragmatic contexts. One embodies expectations characteristic of the context that relied upon literacy- homogeneity, hierarchy, centralism, tradition. The other, of the adopted country, is focused upon needs that effect the transition to the civilization of illiteracy- heterogeneity, horizontality, decentralism, tradition as choice, but not way of life.
Aspects of immigration (and in general of human migration) need to be addressed, not from the perspective of parallel literacies, but as variations within a unifying pragmatic framework. The de-culturization of people originating from many countries and belonging to many nations is probably a unique feature of America. It impacted all aspects of life, and continues to be a source of vitality, as well as tension. Immigrants arrive as literates (some more so than others) only to discover that their literacy is relatively useless. That things were not always like this is relatively well documented. Neil Postman reported that the 17th-century settlers were quite literate in terms characteristic of the time. Up to 95 percent of the men were able to read the Bible; among women the percentage reported is 62. They also read other publications, some imported from England, and at the beginning of the second half of the eighteenth century supported a printing industry soon to become very powerful.
In importing their literacies, the English, as well as the French and Dutch, imported all the characteristics that literacy implies and which went into the foundation of the American government. Over time, in the successive waves of immigration, unskilled and skilled workers, intellectuals, and peasants arrived. They all had to adapt to a different culture, dominated by the British model but moving farther away from it as the country started to develop its own characteristics. Each national or ethnic group, shaped through practical experiences that did not have a common denominator, had to adapt to others. The country grew quite fast, as did its industry, transportation system, farming, banking, and the many services made possible and necessary by the overall economic development. To some extent, literacy was an integral part of these accomplishments. The young country soon established its own body of literature, reflecting its own experience, while remaining true to the literacy of the former mother country. I say to some extent because, as the history of each of these accomplishments shows, the characteristics inherent in literacy were opposed, under the banner of States' rights, democracy, individuality, or progress.
With all this in mind, it is no wonder that Americans do not like to hear that they are a nation of illiterates, as people from much older cultures are sometimes inclined to call them (for right or wrong reasons). No wonder either that they are still committed to literacy; moreover, that they believe that it represents a panacea to the problems raised by fast technological cycles of change, by new modes of human interaction, and by circumstances of practical experiences to which they have to adapt. Educators and business-people are well aware, and worried, that literacy in the classical sense is declining. The sense of history they inherited makes them demand that effort and money be spent to turn the tide and bring America back to past greatness, or at least to some stability. Probably the nature of this greatness is misunderstood or misconstrued, since there is not much in the history of the accomplishments of the United States that could rank the country among the cultural giants of past and present civilizations.
Throughout its history, America always represented, to some degree, a break with the values of the old world. The Europeans who came to the Dutch, French, and English colonies had at least one thing in common: they wanted to escape from the pragmatics of hierarchy, centralized political and religious domination, and fixed rules of social and cultural life representing a system of order that kept them in their place. Freedom of religion-one of the most sought after-is freedom from a dominant, unified church and its vision of the unconditionally submissive individual. Cultivating one's own land, another hope that animated the settlers, is freedom from practical serfdom imposed by the landowning nobility on those lower on the hierarchy. John Smith's maxim that those who didn't work didn't eat was perhaps the first blow to the European values that ranked language and culture along with social status and privilege.
Most likely, the immigrants, highborn and low, did not come with the intention of overthrowing the sense and morals prevailing at the time. The phase of imitation of the old, characteristic of any development, extended from religious ceremonies to ways of working, enjoying, educating, dressing, and relating to outsiders (natives, slaves, religious sects). In this phase of imitation, a semi-aristocracy established itself in the South, emulating the English model. In protesting the taxes and punitive laws imposed by King George III, the upper-class colonials were demanding their rights as Englishmen, with all that this qualifier entailed. Jefferson's model for the free United States was that the agrarian state best embodied the classic ideals that animated him. Jefferson was himself the model of literacy-based practical experiences, a landed aristocrat who owned slaves, a man trained in the logic of Greece and Rome. His knowledge came from books. He was able to bring his various interests in architecture, politics, planning, and administration in focus through the pragmatic framework for which literacy was adequate. Although Jefferson, among others, rejected monarchy, which his fellow citizens would have set up, he did not hesitate to exercise the almost kingly powers that the executive branch of government entailed. His activity shows how monarchic centrality and hierarchy were translated in the new political forms of emerging democracies, within which elective office replaced inherited power. In the history of early America, we can see how literacy carries over the non-egalitarian model as it advanced equality in people's natural rights and before the law, the power of rules, and a sense of authority inspired by religion, practiced in political life, and connected to expectations of order.
Just as new trees sprout from the trunk of an old tree, so new paradigms take root within an old one. People immigrated to America to escape the old models. Challenged by the need to provide a framework for their own self-identification, they ended up establishing an alternative context for the unfolding of the Industrial Revolution. In the process, they changed in more ways than they could foresee. Politically, they established conditions conducive to emancipation from the many constraints of the system they left. Even their patterns of living, speaking, behaving, and thinking changed. In 1842, Charles Dickens observed of Americans that "The love of trade is assigned as a reason for that comfortless custom…of married persons living in hotels, having no fireside of their own, and seldom meeting, from early morning until late at night, but at the hasty public meals. The love of trade is a reason why the literature of America is to remain forever unprotected: 'For we are a trading people, and don't care for poetry: though we do, by the way, profess to be very proud of our poets.'" Dickens came from a culture that considered literacy one of the highest achievements of England, so much so that, according to Jane Austen, Shakespeare could be particularly appreciated by the English alone (cf. Mansfield Park). She gave cultivation of the mind the highest priority. Literature was expected to assist in defining values and pointing out the proper moral and intellectual direction. France was in a very similar position in regard to its culture and literature; so were the German lands and Holland. Even Russia, otherwise opposed to acknowledging the new pragmatic context of industrial production, was affected by the European Enlightenment.
De Toqueville, whose journey to America contributed to his fame, made his historic visit in the 1830's. By this time, America had time and opportunity to establish its peculiar character, so he was able to observe characteristics that would eventually define a new paradigm. The associated emerging values, based on a life relatively free of historic constraints, caught his attention: "The Americans can devote to general education only the early years of life. […] At fifteen they enter upon their calling, and thus their education generally ends at the age when ours begins. If it is continued beyond that point, it aims only towards a particular specialized and profitable purpose; one studies science as one takes up a business; and one takes up only those applications whose immediate practicality is recognized. […] There is no class, then, in America, in which the taste for intellectual pleasures is transmitted with hereditary fortune and leisure and by which the labors of the intellect are held in honor. Accordingly, there is an equal want of the desire and power of application to these objects."
Opinions, even those of scholars of de Toqueville's reputation, are inherently limited in scope. Sent by the French government to examine prisons and penitentiaries in the New World, he wound up writing a study of how a highly literate European understood America's social and political institutions. Many of the characteristics of the civilization of illiteracy were emerging during the years of his visit. He highlighted the shortness of political cycles, the orality of public administration, the transience of commitments (the little there is of writing "is soon wafted away forever, like the leaves of the sibyl, by the smallest breeze"). Severance from the past, in particular, made this visitor predict that Americans would have to "recourse to the history of other nations in order to learn anything of the people who now inhabit them." What we read in de Toqueville is the expression of the surprise caused by discontinuity, by change, and by a dynamics that in other parts of the world was less obvious.
The New World certainly provided new themes, addressed and interpreted differently by Americans and Europeans. The more European cities of the Northeast- Boston, New York, Philadelphia-maintained cultural ties to the Old World, as evidenced by universities, scholars, poets, essayists, and artists. Nevertheless, Washington Irving complained that one could not make a living as a writer in the United States as one could in Europe. Indeed, many writers earned a living as journalists (which is a way of being a writer) or as civil servants. The real America-the one Dickens so lamented-was taking form west of the Hudson River and beyond the Appalachian Mountains. This was truly a world where the past did not count.
America finally did away with slavery (as a by-product of the Civil War). But at the same time, it started undoing some part of the underlying structure reflected in literacy. The depth and breadth of the process escaped the full understanding of those literate Founding Fathers who set the process in motion, and was only partially realized by others (de Toqueville included). It clearly affected the nature of human practical experiences of self-constitution as free citizens of a democracy whose chance to succeed lay in the efficiency, not in the expressive power, of ideas. America's industrial revolution took place against a background different from that of the rest of the world- a huge island indulging in relative autarchy for a short time. Forces corresponding to the pragmatics of the post-industrial age determined a course of opening itself and opening as much of the world as possible-regardless of how this was to be accomplished. The process still affects economic development, financial markets, cultural interdependencies, and education.
"The best of the useful and the best of the ornamental"
Some will protest that over 150 years have gone by and the American character has been shaped by more than the love of trade. They will point to the literary heritage of Washington Irving, Mark Twain, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James. Indeed, 20th century American writers have been appreciated and imitated abroad. Faulkner and Hemingway are the best known examples. Today, American writers of lesser stature and talent are translated into the various European languages, for the same reasons that Disneyland was brought to France. Americans will point to theaters (which presented European plays) and opera houses, forgetting how late these acquisitions are, instituted when economic progress was on a sound track. Indeed, the response to these assertions is simple: the result of other influences is not a change of course, but a much faster movement in the direction America pursues.
A good example is given by education. The American colleges and universities founded in the 18th and early 19th centuries attempted to follow the traditional model of learning for its own sake; that is, moral and intellectual improvement through study of the age-old classics. This lasted until various interest groups, in particular businessmen, questioned the validity of an educational program that had little or no pragmatic value. These schools were in the East-Harvard, Brown, Yale, Columbia, William and Mary- and the curricula reflected that of the Old World. In general, only the elite of America attended them. The newer universities, the so-called Land Grant colleges, later called state universities (such as Ohio State University, Texas A & M), established west of the Allegheny River during the last quarter of the 19th century, did indeed pursue more pragmatic programs-agriculture and mechanics-to serve the needs of the respective state, not the nation.
In view of this demand for what is useful, it is easy to understand why American universities have become high (and sometimes not so high) level vocational schools, substituting for what high school rarely provided. Pragmatic requirements and anti-elitist political considerations collided with the literate model and a strange hybrid resulted. A look at how the course offerings changed over time brings clear evidence that logic, rhetoric, culture, appreciation of the word and of the rules of grammar and syntax-all the values associated with a dominant literacy-are relegated to specializations in philosophy, literature, or written communication, and to a vast, though confusing, repertory of elective classes, which reflect an obsession with free choice and a leveling notion of democracy. Literature, after being forced to give up its romantic claim to permanency, associates itself with transitory approaches that meet, with increasing opportunistic speed, whatever the current agenda might be: feminism, multiculturalism, anti-war rhetoric, economic upheaval. Human truth, as literary illusion or hope, is replaced by uncertainty. No wonder that in this context programs in linguistics and philology languish or disappear from the curriculum. Economics lost its philosophic backbone and became an exercise in statistics and mathematics.
When faced with a list of courses that a university requires, most students ask, "Why do I need…?" In this category fall literature, mathematics, philosophy, and almost everything else definable within literacy as formative subject matter or discipline. Blame for this attitude, if any can be uttered, should not be put on the young people processed by the university system. The students conform, as difficult as it might be for them to understand their conformity, to what is expected of them: to get a driver's license and a college diploma, and to pay taxes. The expectation of a diploma does not result from requirements of qualification but from the American obsession with equality. America, which revolted against hierarchy and inequality, has never tolerated even the appearance of individual superiority. This led to a democracy that opposed superiority, leveling what was not equal-rights or aptitudes, opportunities or abilities-at any price. College education as privilege, which America inherited from the Europe it left behind, was considered an injustice. Over time, commercial democracy turned college into another shopping mall. Today, diplomas, from BA to Ph.D., are expected just for having attended college, a mere prerequisite to a career, not necessarily the result of rigorous mental application leading to quality results. Young adults go to college because they heard that one can get a better (read higher paying) job with a college education.
The result of broadening the scope of university studies to include professions for which only training is required is that the value of a college diploma (but not the price paid for it) has decreased. Some say that soon one will need a college diploma just to be a street cleaner (sanitation engineer). Actually, a person will not need a diploma, but will just happen to have one. And the wage of a sanitation worker will be so high (inflation always keeps pace with demagogy) that a college graduate will feel more entitled to the job than a high school dropout. When Thomas Jefferson studied, he realized that none of his studies would help him run his plantation. Architecture and geometry were subordinate to a literacy-dominated standard. Nevertheless, education inspired him as a citizen, as it inspired all who joined him in signing the Declaration of Independence.
A context was established for further emancipation. The depth and breadth of the process escaped the full understanding of those who set the process in motion, and was at best partially realized by very few others, de Tocqueville included. It clearly affected the nature of human practical experiences of self-constitution as free citizens of a democracy whose chance to succeed lay in the efficiency of ideas, not in their expressive power. Inventiveness was unleashed; labor-saving devices, machinery that did the work of tens and hundreds of men provided more and more immediate satisfaction than intellectual exercise did.
Americans do not, if they ever did, live in an age of the idea for its own sake or for the sake of the spirit. Maintaining mental faculties or uplifting the spirit are imported services. In the early history of the USA, the Transcendentalist movement, of a priori intuitions, was a strong intellectual presence, but its adherents only transplanted the seed from Europe. Those and others-the schools of thought associated with Peirce, Dewey, James, and Royce-rarely took root, producing a flower more appreciated if it actually was imported. This is not a country that appreciates the pure idea. America has always prided itself in its products and practicality, not thinking and vision. "A plaine souldier that can use a pick-axe and a spade is better than five knights," according to Captain John Smith. His evaluation summarizes the American preference for useful over ornamental.
Paradoxically though, business leaders argued for education and proclaimed their support for schools and colleges. At a closer look, their position appears somewhat duplicitous. American business needed its Cooper, Edison, and Bell, around whose inventions and discoveries industries were built. Once these were in place, it needed consumers with money to buy what industries produced. Business supported education as a right and took all the tax deductions it could in order to have this right serve the interests of industry and business. Consequently, in American society, ideas are validated only at the material level, in providing utility, convenience, comfort, and entertainment, as long as these maximize profit. "The sooner the better" is an expectation of efficiency, one that does not take into consideration the secondary effects of production or actions, as long as the first effect was profit. Not the educated citizen, but the person who succeeded in getting rich no matter how, was considered the "smart" fellow, as Dickens learned during his journey through America. Prompted by such a deeply rooted attitude, Sidney Lanier, of Georgia, deplored the "endless tale/ of gain by cunning and plus by sale." To value success regardless of the means applied is part of the American teleology (sometimes in complicity with American theology).
Bertrand Russell observed of Machiavelli that no one has been more maligned for simply stating the truth. The observation applies to those who have taken upon themselves the task of writing about the brave citizens of the free land. Dickens was warned against publishing his American Notes. European writers and artists, and visitors from Russia, China, and Japan have irritated their American friends through their sincere remarks. Not many Americans refer to Thorston Veblen, Theodore Dreiser, Henry James, or to Gore Vidal, but the evaluations these authors made of the American character have been criticized by the majority of their compatriots whose sentimental vision of America cannot cope with legitimate observations. Mark Twain felt that he'd rather be "damned to John Bunyan's heaven" than be obliged to read James's The Bostonians.
The rear-view mirror syndrome
So why do Americans look back to a time when people "knew how to read and write," a time when "each town had five newspapers?" Big businesses, consolidated well before the invention of newer means of communication and mediation, have large investments in literacy: newspapers, publishing houses, and especially universities. But the promise of a better material life through literacy today rings tragically hollow in the ears of graduates who cannot find jobs in their fields of study. The advertisement most telling of this state of affairs is for a cooking school: "College gave me a degree in English. Peter Kump's Cooking School gave me a career."
Granted that literacy has never made anyone rich in the monetary sense, we can ask what the pragmatic framework set up in this part of the New World did accomplish that literacy could not. In the first place, escape from one dominant mode embodied in literate practical experiences facilitated the assertion of other modes of expression and communication. Peter Cooper, founder of the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City, made his fortune in railroads, glue, and gelatin desserts. He was truly illiterate: he could not read. Obviously he was not unintelligent. Many pioneers had a better command of their tools than of their pen. They read nature with more understanding than some university students read books. There are other cases of people who succeed, sometimes spectacularly, although they cannot read. The illiterate California businessman who taught high school social sciences and mathematics for eighteen years became known because television, for some reason, saw in him a good case for the literacy cause. People like him rely on a powerful memory or use an intelligence not based on literate conventions. Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences (formerly known as aptitudes) seems to be ignored by educators who still insist that everyone learn to read and write-better said, conform to the conventions of literacy-as though these were the only ways to comprehend others and to function in life. There are few commentaries that contradict this attitude. William Burroughs thought that "Language is a virus from outer space." Probably it feels better to perceive language like this in view of the many abuses to which language is subjected, but also in view of the way people use it to deceive. A more direct criticism states: "The current high profile of literacy is symptomatic of a speedy, ruthless transition from an industrial to an information-based economy. […] Literacy, to be sure, is a powerful, unique technology. Yet literacy remains a human invention contained by social contract, and the maintenance of that contract in education betrays our ideas of humanity as surely as our use of literacy enforces them" (cf. Elsbeth Stuckey)
American experience shows that the imposition of a sole model of higher education, based on literacy, has economic, social, and cultural consequences. It is very costly. It levels instead of addressing and encouraging diversity. It introduces expectations of cultural homogeneity in a context that thrives on heterogeneity. The literate model of education with which the country flirted, and which still seems so attractive, negates one of America's sources of vitality-openness to alternatives, itself made possible by the stubborn refusal of centralism and hierarchy. Held in high esteem in the early part of American history, literacy came to students through schoolhouses in which Webster's Speller and McGuffey's Reader disbursed more patriotism (essential to a nation in search of an identity) and more awareness of what "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" should mean than quality writing or the possibility to select good books for reading. Literacy with a practical purpose, and the variety of literacies corresponding to the variety of human practical experiences, is a discovery made in America. Understanding pragmatic requirements as opposed to pursuing literacy for the sake of literacy, at the price of rejecting its rewards, is where the road forks. But here America follows Yogi Berra's advice: "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."
In their search for new values, or when faced with competing answers to tough questions, people tend to look back to a time when everything seemed all right. And they tend to pick and choose the characteristics that led to this perceived state of affairs. Things were all right, some want to believe, when kids, plodding along country roads, winter or summer, went to school and learned to read. Therefore, most people assume that the environment propitious to literacy will bring back the golden age. No one wants to see that America was never reducible to this romantic picture. In the South, education never seemed to be a mission. Slaves and poor whites remained outside the idealized stream. Females were not encouraged to study. A Protestant viewpoint dominated subject matter (recall the Puritan alphabet primer).
Americans seem intent on ignoring accomplishments outside the domain of literacy and the dynamics of the non-literate United States. In admiration of real cultures, Americans do not want to hear or see that many of them, of proud and ancient ancestry, started questioning their own values and the education transmitting them. The practical sense and pragmatism ascertained in the formation of America were adopted as causes worth fighting for. In Europe, students protested an education that did not prepare them for work. Thanks to universal education-European governments by and large offer publicly supported higher education, at no cost to the student, through college and graduate school-more young people received an education (in the classical sense of the word) and their ranks flooded the market. They discovered that they were not prepared for the practical experiences characteristic of the new pragmatics, especially the new forms of mediations that characterize work and that are making headway around the world. In Europe, there is a clear distinction between university studies and vocational studies. This has prevented universities from becoming the high-class vocational schools that they are in America, and has maintained the meaning of the diploma as a proof of intellectual endeavor. On the other hand, they remain ivory towers, not preparing students for the practical experiences of the new pragmatics. Brotlose Kunst (breadless art) is what the Germans now call such fields of study as literature, philosophy, musicology, religion, and any other purely intellectual endeavor.
Looking at a totally different culture, Americans tend to respond to Japan's economic success and criticism of our system by saying that our educational system must become more like that of America's leading competitor. They ignore the fact that Japan's high rate of productivity has less to do with the nation's high rate of literacy than does the indoctrination and character formation that Japanese schooling entails. Fundamental attitudes of conformity, team mentality, and a very strong sense of hierarchy, together with an almost sacred sense of tradition, are instilled through literate means. One does not have to be literate in any language in order to solder one circuit to another on an assembly line or to snap together modular components fabricated by advanced machines. What is necessary, indeed expected, is an ethic that calls for a sense of duty and pride in a job well done, a sense met by the social promise of permanency. All in all, the Japanese system allows for little variation from the consensus, and even less for the creation of new models. The only way Japan stepped out of the literate mode in the manufacturing world is in quality control. Ironically, this idea was developed by the American Edward Denning, but rejected by his compatriots, who literally stagnated in a hierarchic model originating from circumstances of literacy. This hierarchical model, now in obvious decline, gave to American businessmen the sense of power they could not achieve through education or culture.
The Japanese, living in a system that preserved its identity while actively pursuing plans for economic expansion, formed strategies of self-containment (severely tested in times of economic downturn), as well as methods of relating to the rest of the world. This condition is manifest in their talent for spotting the most profitable from other countries, making it theirs, and pursuing avenues of competition in which what is specifically Japanese (skills, endurance, collusion) and the appropriated foreign component are successfully joined. Almost the entire foundation of today's television, in its analog embodiment, is Japanese. But if for some reason the programming component would cease to exist, all the marvelous equipment that makes TV possible would abruptly become useless. In some ways, Japan has almost no interest in a change of paradigm in television, such as the revolutionary digital TV, because an enormous industry, present in almost every home where television is used, would have to reinvent itself. The expectation of permanency that permeates literate Japan thus extends from literacy to a medium of illiteracy. In the American context, of almost no stable commitments, digital television, along with many other innovations in computation and other fields, is a challenge, not a threat to an entire infrastructure. This example was not chosen randomly. It illustrates the dynamics of the change from a literacy-dominated civilization to one of many competing literacies. These emerge in the context of change from self-sufficient, relatively small-scale, homogeneous communities to the global world of today, so powerfully interconnected through television and through digital media of all kinds. As illiterates, Americans lead other nations in breakthroughs in medicine, genetics, networking, interactive multimedia, virtual reality, and inventiveness in general.
Obviously, it is easier to design a course of education assuming some permanency or maintaining it, regardless of pragmatic requirements. Diane Ravitch stated that it is hard to define what education will be needed for the future when we don't know what skills the jobs of the future will require. An optimal education, reflecting pragmatic needs of highly mediated practical experiences of distributed effort and networking, will have to facilitate the acquisition of new cognitive skills. Decentralized, non-sequential, non-deterministic experiences require cognitive skills different from those characteristic of literacy. Schools used to be able to prepare students to find their place in the workforce even before graduation. More schools than ever insist on churning out a strange version of the literate student who should go on to a college that is more (though still not enough) vocational school than university. The university, under the alibi of equal opportunity and more in consideration of its own agenda, has done more damage to education and literacy by forcing itself upon Americans as the only means to attain a better life. The result is crowded classes in which passive students are processed according to the industrial model of the assembly line, while the creative energy of faculty and students is redirected to a variety of ventures promising what a university cannot deliver. The very word university acknowledges one encompassing paradigm, prevalent in the Middle Ages, that the USA practically disposed of over a century ago. In an age of global reality and many paradigms, the university is in reality less universal and increasingly specialized.
In these times of change, America, founded on innovation and self-reliance, seems to forget its own philosophy of decentralization and non-hierarchy. By no surprise, the newer computer technology-based companies took the lead in decentralizing and networking the workplace, in re-engineering each and every business. Most business-people, especially in established companies, are reluctant to address matrix management methods or to use distributed forms of organization and decentralized structures. Consequently, after waves of corporate restructuring and resizing, presidents and chairmen (not unlike university presidents and school principals) are kings, and the laborer, when not replaced by a machine, is often a virtual serf. Surprisingly, the decentralized spirit of homesteading and the distribution of tasks and responsibilities, through which much of efficiency is reached, makes slow headway. But things are changing! If there is an engine at work pulling the world from its literacy- based pragmatics to the future of higher efficiency required by the new scale of human activity, it has the initials USA written on it. And it is-make no mistake about it-digital.
When not faithful to its own experience of pluralism and self-motivation, the USA faces the inherent limitations of literacy-based practical experience in a number of domains, the political included. America once had a number of political parties. Now it seems that it cannot effectively get beyond the literate dualistic model of two antagonistic parties, emulating the Tories and the Whigs of the empire to which it once belonged. European countries and several African and Asian states have multi-party systems that reflect sensitivity to differences and take advantage of the variety they allow for. Such systems enfranchise more of a country's citizenry than does the two- party system in the USA. Every four years, Americans demand greater choice in elections, but only one state, Alaska, considers it normal to have more than two parties, and, incidentally, a governor who is neither Republican nor Democrat.
The USA has a complex about literacy to the extent that every subject is now qualified as literacy-cultural literacy, computer literacy, visual literacy, etc.-whether literacy is involved or not. Literacy has become its own specialty. In addition, new literacies, effectively disconnected from the ideals and expectations of classical literacy, have emerged from practical experiences of human self-constitution in realms where writing and reading are no longer required. This would not be so bad if it were not blinding people to the truth about a major characteristic of humankind. Diversity of expression and multiplicity of communication modes define new areas of human accomplishment and open avenues for further unfolding of people's creative and economic potential. The new condition of language, in particular the failure of literacy, is at the same time a symptom of a new stage in human progress. It in no way reflects a failure of national policy or will. As a matter of fact, the new stage we are entering is a reflection of the human spirit unfolding, refusing to be held captive to a dominant mode that has outlived its usefulness. It may well be that the coming of age of America is part of this new stage. After all, many believe that the crisis of language is the crisis of the white man (cf. Gottfried Benn), or at least of Western civilization.
So, is the USA the epitome of the civilization of illiteracy? Yes, America is illiterate to the extent that it constituted itself as an alternative to the world based on the underlying structures of literacy. The new pragmatic framework that the USA embodies does not automatically free it from the seductive embrace of the civilization it negates, and the current angst over the state of literacy is a manifestation of this. As an embodiment of the civilization of illiteracy, America demonstrates how several literacies can work together by complementing each other. Such a pragmatics succeeds or fails on its own terms. Whenever the implicit founding principles of adaptation, openness, exploration and validation of new models, and pragmatically based institutions are pursued, the result is the expected efficiency. Sometimes, the price people seem to pay for it is very high-unemployment, dislocation, retrenchment, a loss of a sense of permanency that humans long for. The price includes the ability or willingness to consider all aspects involved in a situation-political, environmental, social, legal, religious. These aspects transcend the tangible and necessitate taking the broad view, which literate civilization allowed for, over the specialized, narrowly focused, short- sighted, parochial view. Other times, it looks as though there are no alternatives. But in the long run, no one would really want to go back to the way things were 200 years ago.