What will literacy rates look like in 500 years?

Or, to borrow a phrase from Florida's governor, where will literacy go to die?

Dennis Mills

18 hr ago

Civil war soldier composing and reading letters

When I retired in 2006 I soon realized that I did not want to become a couch potato.

A friend introduced me to the local literacy volunteer organization, and I spent one winter attending several courses designed to turn literate people into tutors for individuals and families whose home language was not English.

There are also a great many citizens who grew up in the USA but do not have the level of literacy required for reading and writing tasks most of us think of as easy.

I also was active on Quora.com, a web site where readers can ask questions of subject experts.

A Quora reader posed the question in this essay’s title and asked me to answer his question.

That is why I took time out of my very busy day as a retired fellow to write yet another Quora answer about literacy. If you saw a photo of me today you’d see an old man with a wry smile but the furrowed brow of someone who is struggling to explain a very complex issue.

I had just finished reading this article in The Atlantic by Jean M. Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and the author of Generation Me and iGen.

Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

Her article discusses some disturbing trends that show how the mental health and sense of well being among young people has declined since the wide-spread available of smart phones.

At the end of the article, you’ll find this interesting video of a discussion between a young man and a young woman about why she does not use a smart phone.

The young woman believes that words can be more powerful than emoticons. But notice how much social pressure is brought to bear on her position.

I’ve included these links because they are nibbling around the edges of what may be a seismic shift in how we naked but very smart apes communicate.

Symbols are replacing the complex creativity of written or spoken language, as if we are on track to communicating with stick figures carved on cave walls.

People young and old who use social media are being forced in many cases to learn a form of literacy that is at most a decade old.

Yes, grandma may use Facebook to keep in touch with her progeny, and will most likely use well chosen words and complete sentences. Her grandchildren, however, are growing up in a world where tweets and emoticons are replacing traditional discourse.

Those of us alive today who are familiar with Ken Burns’ film The Civil War must at times wonder how people with perhaps less than a grade school education could write such eloquent letters from the battle fields.

Today I know very few people who use the written word so powerfully. And yes, I include myself among those lacking such skill.

Within one lifetime, I have watched as telegraphy was replaced by telephones, which replaced letters, while television replaced newspapers, and the internet replaced all these technologies with emoticons, 128 character missives, and five minute videos that claim to explain the two world wars.

Symbols can, of course, be wonderful shortcuts. While driving, we all recognize the unique shape and color of a stop sign long before we can read the word “Stop.”

But such symbols must be unambiguous and universally agreed upon.

I fear “emoticons” and other modern replacements for written and spoken language may be violating those rules.

Imagine two people reading a tweet, and responding with a smile emoticon.

Person “A” is asked what they mean by the smile, and replies “I loved that answer.”

Person “B” is asked the same question, and replies “The tweet is so poorly written and such bulls*** that I couldn’t stop laughing.”

Of course, written and spoken words can also be misinterpreted. There is no doubt, however, about what the words spoken by person “A” and person “B” mean.

As for the original question, 500 years is too long a time to make accurate predictions.

Centuries and decades are also problematic in terms of prediction.

Even predictions assumed correct by the vast majority of very smart people about an event occurring the next day turn out wrong. Just consider our recent mid term elections.

So please take my prediction about literacy with a large dose of skepticism.

I believe face to face human interaction will become far less common decades from now and that humans will be relying less on spoken and written language and more on iconography and perhaps holograms.

Symbols and imagery will continue to replace written and spoken words during the next several generations, and a hundred years out well educated people may stand in awe at how powerful were the words spoken and written by people alive today — a bit like how I stand in awe of a young civil war soldier writing sentences and paragraphs and pages that move me to tears so many years after our Civil War.

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