AdeptPaladin wrote:We're already headed that way;
The advent of spell-checking and grammar checking has made knowing how to spell or write sentences accurately less important.
I read various mailing lists, usenet groups, and message boards.
I assure you, I am well aware of the problem you describe.
I've been spending the last few days monitoring and posting to some database newsgroups. The biggest trouble I have in answering people's questions is in figuring out what on Earth they are talking about amidst a jumble of misspelled words, cut-off thoughts, and incomplete information.
Wait, it's like that around here sometimes, too.
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Ken Burns' documentary, The Civil War, was filled with readings from the diaries and letters of the people of the time. It seemed to be, upon hearing these writings, that the most average man or woman of the US of 1860 could write ordinary ramblings that equal the best work of today's writers (or, at least it seemed so in my opinion).
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However, this does not change the fact that among those who
drive* and
build the technology of the world around us, literacy is the absolute and unequivocal key that allows it all to happen. Colleges and Universities are filled with books. Students spend large sums buying some of them and large periods of time studying those purchases and the many more they will never own in the obligatory giant library on campus.
A lack of this material would collapse the entire learning process.
Worse, what about the law? The law may be insane, but what little functionality remains to us is really all we have that holds are society together (those who doubt this need merely look at New Orleans a short while ago), and the size of the written word on the subject is immense. Saying we should just junk it all is as ridiculous as saying we should always trust . . . oops, I'm going in the wrong directly on that one, I'll just stop there.
* No, I am not referring to vehicular operation.
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I suppose, in a higher tech universe, where DNI is the norm, and implant learning is everyday, that literacy will become unnecessary as everything you want is neatly deposited into your mind without effort. Except that people would be able to become literate in a few moments, at will, via the technology, and so everyone would be. But even this aspect of possible future life is explored in SF literature. John C. Wright's
The Golden Age trilogy sees this. In the second novel, the hero of the story is forced to uninstall scores of programs from the computer grown into his brain. Intelligence enhancers, secretaries, it all had to go. Finally, for the first time in his entire life, he had to think on his own. It wasn't a pretty picture, either. Quite a commentary on the possibilities, I rather thought.