Illiteracy in the Coalition

[Rallan]

come on the whole illerate thing is just impossile to pull off. In order to have a modern society you have to have a educated population. Are you going to teach electrians plumber enjineers nurses doctors etc by symbols or teach them to read at eighteen on top of there job anybody in a tech field knows you have to reference things. I don't know a tenth of the law I need but Ihave my law books right there. Fixing a tank in 20th centuary terms is done mostly by the operators following books stowed away controling information is one thing but there is no way the CS could function without litarcy

Everything you say here has been addressed (shot down).
Read the thread and try again.

Yes, everything has been shot down by the guy who thinks there are maybe five physicists in the entire Coalition.

Actually, most of it's been shot down by me.
I'm not sure who you're talking about that thinks there's maybe 5 physicists in the entire CS, but that ain't me.
Try again.

Frankly, the notion that the CS can maintain production of any high tech equipment of any kind is rather marginal. It takes enormous manpower to design and produce the low end crap we have today.

Ever notice that the CS uses pre-rifts designs?
As for producing it, since we don't know exactly what goes into production, there's no way of knowing how it's done.

I'm guessing a lot of robots.

It also takes a stable supply chain.

Which the CS has.

Voluntarily making your system inferior in the face of instability is utter stupidity, because your chances of success are really poor to start with.

I disagree with your assessment of the CS's chances.

Be honest dude. You don't really think that a sophisticated high-tech society with a massive administration and secret police could be ran illiterately. You've just admitted to yourself that Rifts is a game that shouldn't be analyzed any more seriously than a saturday morning action cartoon (because really, it shouldn't, otherwise it all falls apart very quickly and we no longer get to enjoy beating the snot out of dinosaurs with our giant robots) and are perfectly happy to just go with the flow on whatever saturday morning action cartoon tropes they decide to include in the game.

Because let's face it, explanations for how the CS could keep going if even the administrative and technical professions were kept illiterate make about as much sense as explanations of how the CS can have however many million SAMAS units in storage. Or explanations for the CS' saturday morning action cartoon villian tactics in the Tolkeen campaign for that matter

[Killer Cyborg]

Be honest dude. You don't really think that a sophisticated high-tech society with a massive administration and secret police could be ran illiterately.

RAN?
No.
Which is why the people at the TOP are literate.

Are you even following the conversation here, or are you just trolling?

[Princedarkstorm]

The SkyKings and officers can read remember!?

[Rallan]

Be honest dude. You don't really think that a sophisticated high-tech society with a massive administration and secret police could be ran illiterately.

RAN?
No.
Which is why the people at the TOP are literate.

Are you even following the conversation here, or are you just trolling?

I have been following the conversation. It's mainly involved you using various spur of the moment suggestions (what TV Tropes refers to as Asspulls) to try and explain how the CS could function if nobody except the small elite at the top were literate. And let's face it, it's just not all that sensible. An illiterate legal profession? Illiterate maintenance and engineering? An illiterate civil service? A secret police force maintaining thousands (hundreds of thousands? millions?) of dossiers when almost none of them have been taught to read? Making the bulk of the population an illiterate underclass to prevent the spread of propaganda is plausible, especially if the powers that be don't care about the plebians and just see them as a pool of cannon fodder and factory labour (hell, most medieval and enlightenment nations ended up with an illiterate underclass without even having to make it illegal). But the Coalition needs an educated class of administrators and technicians to be able to function, to handle all the nuts and bolts of running a country that can't be done by uneducated workers but aren't important enough for the elite to take care of. And that class of administrators and technicians just can't function withot being literate unless you introduce a whole bunch of far-fetched solutions that raise at least as many problems as they solve.

[bigbobsr6000]

Be honest dude. You don't really think that a sophisticated high-tech society with a massive administration and secret police could be ran illiterately.

RAN?
No.
Which is why the people at the TOP are literate.

Are you even following the conversation here, or are you just trolling?

I have been following the conversation. It's mainly involved you using various spur of the moment suggestions (what TV Tropes refers to as Asspulls) to try and explain how the CS could function if nobody except the small elite at the top were literate. And let's face it, it's just not all that sensible. An illiterate legal profession? Illiterate maintenance and engineering? An illiterate civil service? A secret police force maintaining thousands (hundreds of thousands? millions?) of dossiers when almost none of them have been taught to read? Making the bulk of the population an illiterate underclass to prevent the spread of propaganda is plausible, especially if the powers that be don't care about the plebians and just see them as a pool of cannon fodder and factory labour (hell, most medieval and enlightenment nations ended up with an illiterate underclass without even having to make it illegal). But the Coalition needs an educated class of administrators and technicians to be able to function, to handle all the nuts and bolts of running a country that can't be done by uneducated workers but aren't important enough for the elite to take care of. And that class of administrators and technicians just can't function withot being literate unless you introduce a whole bunch of far-fetched solutions that raise at least as many problems as they solve.

Not if all this stuff is "read" to these people by the computer's voice. They speak the person's name, subject matter or tech spec they need to the computer and the computer in voice tells the operator what they need to know. They can then record it on their palm pilot or other portable computer to take it with them to play back the info as needed without any written word even appearing on the screen. Pictures yes, no words.

When everything is voice activated only and the computer's voice is the only communication available, save for pictures, then the need for any written word is gone. There are programs now that all you have to do is talk to the computer and it talks back without any written word or reading anything.

With the great super high tech computers the Rift’s Earth CS has at their disposable, this is very easily done. I agree that high-level officials, techs, docs, officers, and such are granted the privilege to become very literate. These would be ones that have demonstrated “loyalty” to the CS as a rule.
Do you recognize these sample symbols?

If so, you did not need to be literate at all to understand their meaning. Check this site out for symbols people understand with out having to be literate.

http://www.symbols.net/

Not to mention the hundreds of Universal Signs for airport, phone, no parking, medical, etc.

[bigbobsr6000]

Check this site out. This is our own US gov't lesson plans about alternate ways to communicate thru Icons and Audio. If you read the whole thing, it explains what the eye can see and the mind retain. Left side of screen navigates thru current lesson plan. Top of screen navigates thru the various lesson plans. This is worth checking out.

http://www.hf.faa.gov/webtraining/Intro/Intro1.htm

[Natasha]

That's a good example of Usability Design.

[Brian Manning]

What percentage do most of you believe to be the "elite" members of the coalition. Two of the four O.C.C.s in RUE start with the Literacy skill as part of their initial skill set (the military specialist and the Technical Officer). I'm not saying that these two classes are abundant, but I wouldn't really consider them CS "elite" running the inner workings of the CS. The technical officer covers things like electricians, mechanics, communications officers, etc...So that right there leads me to believe that they do have quite a few middle ranking literate soldiers that they trust enough to read, but I'm sure they still keep an eye on what reading materials they have access to.

Also, earlier there was a quote taken from the book mentioning something like 85% of all grunts are illiterate. That means either 15% are secretly learning to read, or that the CS tends to tolerate it (and maybe keep an eye on them). The literacy skill isn't restricted for the grunt or the RPA pilot, so while the general level of literacy among the citizens is low, I imagine that within those running the CS it's a bit higher (at least enough to be functional).

That plus they can really take the whole icon/symbol thing pretty far. I mean we all know what icons for play, stop, pause, fastforward/rewind and eject look like. I'm sure there are certain icons/symbols used for public messages, like showing a picture of a known criminal, and a couple of symbols next to his mug that show he's wanted for assault and battery, with a "reward" icon next to a credit amount. Not to mention that this kind of thing would probably be displayed on a small flexible LCD type monitor that also has an audio message with more details for those standing right in front of the "poster".

Not saying that any major technological powerhouse should be run that way, but I'm saying that there's more than enough material for me to see past all that, and not keep pondering on that thinking "that wouldn't really work".

[Natasha]

Not saying that any major technological powerhouse should be run that way, but I'm saying that there's more than enough material for me to see past all that, and not keep pondering on that thinking "that wouldn't really work".

Amen.

[Rallan]

Not if all this stuff is "read" to these people by the computer's voice. They speak the person's name, subject matter or tech spec they need to the computer and the computer in voice tells the operator what they need to know. They can then record it on their palm pilot or other portable computer to take it with them to play back the info as needed without any written word even appearing on the screen. Pictures yes, no words.

You do realise that this would make the three guys playing Half-Life 2 in the tech support office the most powerful men in the Coalition States, right? If things were computerised to that point, the CS would be a society where literally nothing can be done whenever there's a glitch in the system because there is no work to do that isn't on the network. And it begs the question of where the guys who program and design and repair the system are gonna come from, since the lack of an educated administrative "middle class" means that you'd have to draw your entire tech support team from eithe the aristocratic ruling families or educated foreigners. And given that the entire administrative middle class desperately needs this computerised assistance to be absolutely everywhere, the amount of work that the IT and tech support guys will be called on to do is gonna be absolutely phenomenal.

Screw the legal system. Screw the bureaucrats. Screw the propaganda guys. Screw pretty much everyone except the army, and only because the army has guns and it can probably still vapourise everyone at peak efficiency for a week or two without computers before its supply chain falls apart. Because as of now, the IT department rules the Coalition States like a mystery cult ruling ignorant peasants, filling everyone with awe at their incomprehensible but absolutely vital ability to prevent the collapse of civilization. Don't worry about Karl Prosek's policy decisions, because the time management skills of a guy wearing an Intel Inside t-shirt are more important to the fate of the nation now

[dark brandon]

You do realise that this would make the three guys playing Half-Life 2 in the tech support office the most powerful men in the Coalition States, right? If things were computerised to that point, the CS would be a society where literally nothing can be done whenever there's a glitch in the system because there is no work to do that isn't on the network.

Why wouldn't there be? Hasn't it already been stated, many times there are people who can and do read?

And it begs the question of where the guys who program and design and repair the system are gonna come from, since the lack of an educated administrative "middle class" means that you'd have to draw your entire tech support team from eithe the aristocratic ruling families or educated foreigners. And given that the entire administrative middle class desperately needs this computerised assistance to be absolutely everywhere, the amount of work that the IT and tech support guys will be called on to do is gonna be absolutely phenomenal.

Assuming computers of the time are faulty and always breaking down, or that there isn't self-repair on computers or computers you can plug into faulty computers that can do repairs.

[Princedarkstorm]

Thank you for the link,Bigbobsr6000.

[bigbobsr6000]

Your are welcome .

[Natasha]

CS leadership - blinded by madness.

I can't wait for it to fall apart. Then I'll play in North America.

[Killer Cyborg]

Not if all this stuff is "read" to these people by the computer's voice. They speak the person's name, subject matter or tech spec they need to the computer and the computer in voice tells the operator what they need to know. They can then record it on their palm pilot or other portable computer to take it with them to play back the info as needed without any written word even appearing on the screen. Pictures yes, no words.

You do realise that this would make the three guys playing Half-Life 2 in the tech support office the most powerful men in the Coalition States, right? If things were computerised to that point, the CS would be a society where literally nothing can be done whenever there's a glitch in the system because there is no work to do that isn't on the network. And it begs the question of where the guys who program and design and repair the system are gonna come from, since the lack of an educated administrative "middle class" means that you'd have to draw your entire tech support team from eithe the aristocratic ruling families or educated foreigners. And given that the entire administrative middle class desperately needs this computerised assistance to be absolutely everywhere, the amount of work that the IT and tech support guys will be called on to do is gonna be absolutely phenomenal.

Screw the legal system. Screw the bureaucrats. Screw the propaganda guys. Screw pretty much everyone except the army, and only because the army has guns and it can probably still vapourise everyone at peak efficiency for a week or two without computers before its supply chain falls apart. Because as of now, the IT department rules the Coalition States like a mystery cult ruling ignorant peasants, filling everyone with awe at their incomprehensible but absolutely vital ability to prevent the collapse of civilization. Don't worry about Karl Prosek's policy decisions, because the time management skills of a guy wearing an Intel Inside t-shirt are more important to the fate of the nation now

Instead of tossing out the very obvious rebuttals, I have a question.

Why do you work so hard trying to create problems where there really aren't any?

[Killer Cyborg]

Be honest dude. You don't really think that a sophisticated high-tech society with a massive administration and secret police could be ran illiterately.

RAN?
No.
Which is why the people at the TOP are literate.

Are you even following the conversation here, or are you just trolling?

I have been following the conversation. It's mainly involved you using various spur of the moment suggestions (what TV Tropes refers to as Asspulls) to try and explain how the CS could function if nobody except the small elite at the top were literate.

Yes, Rallan, we all know that you've learned a new word and love to link to it. Congratulations.

It doesn't apply here, though.
That's the thing about new words; you have to use them correctly.

And let's face it, it's just not all that sensible. An illiterate legal profession?

This is a great example of how and why you're not making any sense.
You're trying to act as if the Coalition was just the United States (or Australia) with different dressing.
"Our societies today have a lot of lawyers, so the CS must also have a lot of lawyers!"

Can you find ANY references in the books to law firms or lawyers in the Coalition?
It's an evil fascist regime full of illiterates. That's the concept.
Anything not canon that does not fit with the concept must be discarded.

In this case, you're pulling an assumption out of nowhere, one that doesn't fit with the concept of the game world.

You picture a lot of lawyers stayed in business in Nazi Germany?
There's only one real law, and that's keep your head down.

Not that there wouldn't be any lawyers. There would be some, but they'd be in the upper levels of Chi-Town, where the overall education is a lot higher.
The rest of the time, what happens to the accused is probably up to the cops.
There would be some sort of judges or magistrates, to handle the cases where extra scrutiny was required, but they wouldn't be many, and they would likely be educated.

Illiterate maintenance and engineering?

Yes.

An illiterate civil service?

Would probably depend on the job.

A secret police force maintaining thousands (hundreds of thousands? millions?) of dossiers when almost none of them have been taught to read?

Already addressed, like most of this.
Computers.

Making the bulk of the population an illiterate underclass to prevent the spread of propaganda is plausible, especially if the powers that be don't care about the plebians and just see them as a pool of cannon fodder and factory labour (hell, most medieval and enlightenment nations ended up with an illiterate underclass without even having to make it illegal). But the Coalition needs an educated class of administrators and technicians to be able to function, to handle all the nuts and bolts of running a country that can't be done by uneducated workers but aren't important enough for the elite to take care of. And that class of administrators and technicians just can't function withot being literate unless you introduce a whole bunch of far-fetched solutions that raise at least as many problems as they solve.

I think the point of our disagreement is that you seem to think that this would be a really large group of fully literate people, but I don't.

[Princedarkstorm]

Thank you,KillerCyborg.

[Rallan]

You do realise that this would make the three guys playing Half-Life 2 in the tech support office the most powerful men in the Coalition States, right? If things were computerised to that point, the CS would be a society where literally nothing can be done whenever there's a glitch in the system because there is no work to do that isn't on the network.

Why wouldn't there be? Hasn't it already been stated, many times there are people who can and do read?

And it begs the question of where the guys who program and design and repair the system are gonna come from, since the lack of an educated administrative "middle class" means that you'd have to draw your entire tech support team from eithe the aristocratic ruling families or educated foreigners. And given that the entire administrative middle class desperately needs this computerised assistance to be absolutely everywhere, the amount of work that the IT and tech support guys will be called on to do is gonna be absolutely phenomenal.

Assuming computers of the time are faulty and always breaking down, or that there isn't self-repair on computers or computers you can plug into faulty computers that can do repairs.

Ah, so the CS is ran by magic computers that don't just do all the government's work for it, they also never break down, never need upgrading, never make mistakes, already have all the software that they'll ever need installed, and never accidentally get dropped or have coffee spilt on them. And make and design themselves without anyone ever having to be able to know how they work.

Gee, this idea of a CS without a literate admin/technical caste just makes more sense by the minute

[Rallan]

Not if all this stuff is "read" to these people by the computer's voice. They speak the person's name, subject matter or tech spec they need to the computer and the computer in voice tells the operator what they need to know. They can then record it on their palm pilot or other portable computer to take it with them to play back the info as needed without any written word even appearing on the screen. Pictures yes, no words.

You do realise that this would make the three guys playing Half-Life 2 in the tech support office the most powerful men in the Coalition States, right? If things were computerised to that point, the CS would be a society where literally nothing can be done whenever there's a glitch in the system because there is no work to do that isn't on the network. And it begs the question of where the guys who program and design and repair the system are gonna come from, since the lack of an educated administrative "middle class" means that you'd have to draw your entire tech support team from eithe the aristocratic ruling families or educated foreigners. And given that the entire administrative middle class desperately needs this computerised assistance to be absolutely everywhere, the amount of work that the IT and tech support guys will be called on to do is gonna be absolutely phenomenal.

Screw the legal system. Screw the bureaucrats. Screw the propaganda guys. Screw pretty much everyone except the army, and only because the army has guns and it can probably still vapourise everyone at peak efficiency for a week or two without computers before its supply chain falls apart. Because as of now, the IT department rules the Coalition States like a mystery cult ruling ignorant peasants, filling everyone with awe at their incomprehensible but absolutely vital ability to prevent the collapse of civilization. Don't worry about Karl Prosek's policy decisions, because the time management skills of a guy wearing an Intel Inside t-shirt are more important to the fate of the nation now

Instead of tossing out the very obvious rebuttals, I have a question.

Why do you work so hard trying to create problems where there really aren't any?

Because somebody asked "how does it work?". I'm quite happy to ignore the elephant in the living room when I'm playing the game (after all, I'm never likely to have to run a campaign where the party are a group of data entry clerks for the Coalition Bureau Of Statistics or something), but this thread is about... well, it's about the elephant in the living room.

Or would you rather we have a conversation about illiteracy in the Coalition that doesn't involve actually talking about illiteracy in the Coalition?

[Killer Cyborg]

Why do you work so hard trying to create problems where there really aren't any?

Because somebody asked "how does it work?"

Hm.
I can accept that.

Or would you rather we have a conversation about illiteracy in the Coalition that doesn't involve actually talking about illiteracy in the Coalition?

It's not you talking about illiteracy in the CS that I was questioning; it was your refusal to accept that it could quite clearly work pretty well.
It seemed like you were trying to stir up **** just for the hell of it.
But if you honestly can't see it, then you can't see it.

[Rallan]

Be honest dude. You don't really think that a sophisticated high-tech society with a massive administration and secret police could be ran illiterately.

RAN?
No.
Which is why the people at the TOP are literate.

Are you even following the conversation here, or are you just trolling?

I have been following the conversation. It's mainly involved you using various spur of the moment suggestions (what TV Tropes refers to as Asspulls) to try and explain how the CS could function if nobody except the small elite at the top were literate.

Yes, Rallan, we all know that you've learned a new word and love to link to it. Congratulations.

It doesn't apply here, though.
That's the thing about new words; you have to use them correctly.

And let's face it, it's just not all that sensible. An illiterate legal profession?

This is a great example of how and why you're not making any sense.
You're trying to act as if the Coalition was just the United States (or Australia) with different dressing.
"Our societies today have a lot of lawyers, so the CS must also have a lot of lawyers!"

Can you find ANY references in the books to law firms or lawyers in the Coalition?
It's an evil fascist regime full of illiterates. That's the concept.
Anything not canon that does not fit with the concept must be discarded.

In this case, you're pulling an assumption out of nowhere, one that doesn't fit with the concept of the game world.

You picture a lot of lawyers stayed in business in Nazi Germany?
There's only one real law, and that's keep your head down.

Actually Nazi Germany had lots of lawyers. They prosecuted in court, represented clients in private cases, and generally ran at a tidy profit and didn't get in trouble as long as they didn't take the unpopular side in matters of politics. Probably not a great example

So anyway, the CS might not have many lawyers! WOW! You've demolished my entire position! Because if it doesn't have many lawyers (which it may or may not, since you're still just making assumptions as you go, or asspulling, to use that lovely word I found last week ), then clearly it mustn't have many doctors, many judges, many, many civil engineers, many accountants, many economists, many anthropologists, many biologists, many cryptographers, many computer programmers, many physicists, many historians, many intelligence officers, many librar- (well okay, it probably won't have many librarians)... And that's before we even get into the more technical and highly educated tradesmen (a carpenter doesn't need an extensive technical education to do his thing, but the same can't be said for the likes of mechanics and electricians), and the veritable army of clerical, administrative, and middle management types that the government and private enterprise need to function.

These jobs all need a higher education, extensive record-keeping, or both. These jobs all require a lot more people than the wealthy elite can provide. Logically, an educated middle class (with education and a priveleged lifestyle compared to the great unwashed masses, but more official scrutiny to weed out deviants) would be the simplest solution. And a literate educated class seems a tad more plausible than an entire country that's administed by computers made out of handwavium that magically keep everything running smoothly without needing more than a tiny handful of people who actually understand the fundamentals of what they do for a living.

[Killer Cyborg]

Actually Nazi Germany had lots of lawyers. They prosecuted in court, represented clients in private cases, and generally ran at a tidy profit and didn't get in trouble as long as they didn't take the unpopular side in matters of politics. Probably not a great example

Probably not.

Got a source for that, BTW?

So anyway, the CS might not have many lawyers! WOW! You've demolished my entire position!

I accept your admission of defeat.

Because if it doesn't have many lawyers (which it may or may not, since you're still just making assumptions as you go, or asspulling, to use that lovely word I found last week ), then clearly it mustn't have many doctors,

Not a heck of a lot, no.

many judges,

I addressed judges already.

many, many civil engineers,

I don't see why they'd need to be literate.

many accountants, many economists,

Quite possibly not.
The economy of Rifts is pretty bizarre.

many anthropologists,

Doesn't require literacy.

many biologists,

Doesn't require literacy.
And no, not a heck of a lot.

many cryptographers,

Possibly.

many computer programmers,

Quite a few.

many physicists,

Quite a few.

many historians,

Very few.

many intelligence officers,

Quite a few.

many librar- (well okay, it probably won't have many librarians)... And that's before we even get into the more technical and highly educated tradesmen (a carpenter doesn't need an extensive technical education to do his thing, but the same can't be said for the likes of mechanics and electricians),

Why not?

and the veritable army of clerical, administrative, and middle management types that the government and private enterprise need to function.

We keep hitting on this.
You keep saying that it would take an army of them, I keep saying that it wouldn't, that a heck of a lot of it would be done by computers, and a lot more could be done by people who aren't that literate.
Accounting would be more important than actual literacy.

These jobs all need a higher education, extensive record-keeping, or both. These jobs all require a lot more people than the wealthy elite can provide. Logically, an educated middle class (with education and a priveleged lifestyle compared to the great unwashed masses, but more official scrutiny to weed out deviants) would be the simplest solution. And a literate educated class seems a tad more plausible than an entire country that's administed by computers made out of handwavium that magically keep everything running smoothly without needing more than a tiny handful of people who actually understand the fundamentals of what they do for a living.

I never said it was a "tiny" number of people who are literate, only that it's the people at the top.

As for the computers, reread the section on Robots and robot skills.
If a basic robot can learn a dozen skills at high level proficiency, why is it handwavium to assume that a good CS computer could take care of accounting or a lot of the other crap that you mentioned?

[Princedarkstorm]

I figure the Cs would have lawyers .The majority being JAGS or ex JAGS.

[dark brandon]

Ah, so the CS is ran by magic computers that don't just do all the government's work for it, they also never break down, never need upgrading, never make mistakes, already have all the software that they'll ever need installed, and never accidentally get dropped or have coffee spilt on them. And make and design themselves without anyone ever having to be able to know how they work.

Gee, this idea of a CS without a literate admin/technical caste just makes more sense by the minute

The thing is rallan, you can't seem to grasp the idea of it because to you everything is just black and white. There is no middle ground. It's either they always break or they never break. It's either they always make mistakes or never make mistakes.

Is the idea that the CS has computers that can diagnose and repair other computers completely off the wall? Or that their systems (which make robots a viable combat option) can be quite complex that while they may have flaws, they don't break down every morning or require the work of thousands of people, or that they're quite durable so dropping them isn't going to be that profound (They're probably made of MDC material), or that someone realized that coffee is a computers worst enemie, and came up with a way to keep that coffee off of it should it spill? I mean, while we can't do something this complex today...oh, wait...we can. And with software...it's not like we have this thing called plug and play...oh...damn...we do. If we can already do most of this, imagine what a world where the CS can do.

Do they design themselves? Once again, you're basic "black and white" vision is shown here because...as stated...again...for the umteenth-thousand time...not everyone is illiterate.

It's ok Rallan. The world is a beautiful place when you learn to see things beyond black and white. Don't be scared.

[Princedarkstorm]

However alot of people tend to view the world in black and white.
It is sad but true.

[glitterboy2098]

you gotta remember though that for every person in a specialized occupation you'll have hundreds more people that are doing basic labor work. you don't require literacy if all you have to do is use a shovel, sew clothes, or assemble pre-made modular parts on an assembly line. only the management does.

[Princedarkstorm]

Agreed!.

[bigbobsr6000]

I concur with the diagnosis, gentleman.

[Princedarkstorm]

Well,We are back on the topic now .

[Rallan]

you gotta remember though that for every person in a specialized occupation you'll have hundreds more people that are doing basic labor work. you don't require literacy if all you have to do is use a shovel, sew clothes, or assemble pre-made modular parts on an assembly line. only the management does.

Except it won't be a one in a hundred thing. Even during the middle ages (where manual labour was pure grunt work, and almost the entire population lived off the land in subsistence agriculture) and the industrial revolution (where agriculture hadn't changed much, but demand for labour had been swollen by the need for unskilled nobodies to work all the factory jobs), the owners, the professionals, the skilled tradesmen, the managers, and the pen-pushing clerks weren't outnumbered hundreds to one by the great unwashed masses. Between them the aristocracy and the "middling sort" (generally business owners, merchants, professionals, and specialist tradesmen) generally made up around 10-30% of the entire population, and this was in far more low-tech times when only a tiny handful of the population actually had to deal with complicated stuff because science and technology weren't nearly as important to the economy as they are today.

So regardless of whether that middle class is literate or not (and I don't think either side is gonna be conceding that argument any time soon), it'd be silly to assume that it's virtually nonexistent compared to the lower classes.

[Princedarkstorm]

Very true .The birth of the blue collar workforce then.

[Natasha]

If it goes that way, sure.

But it doesn't have to...

[Princedarkstorm]

Very true, Natasha.