I’ve been thinking about the upcoming Pat Conroy Literary Festival and how lucky we are to have it. When so many news reports are telling us we live in a “post-literate society,” a literary festival in our own town seems like a rare gem, doesn’t it?
Surely, you’ve been reading about it, too? Our “post-literate society”? I guess the fact that we’re reading about it means we’re not entirely post-literate yet, but the prognosis is grim.
What do people mean by “post-literate,” anyway? Well, I am just post-literate enough that I took that question to Google AI – what, you thought I was gonna read a book about it!? – and it gave me some bullet points, then directed me to Wikipedia.
The Wikipedia page for “post-literate society” was quite sparse – you might even call it post-literate – so I went searching for an article I remembered reading last week in the New York Times. That’s right! The Times! I was suddenly feeling quite literate again.
Turns out, the “article” was actually a podcast transcript, so I was back in the post-literate realm. Or, at least, semi post-literate. The two people on the podcast, conversing about our post-literate society, seemed quite learned – you might even say literate – so I wasn’t really sure.
Here’s how the Times introduced the discussion:
Literacy is declining sharply across the West. In the era of vertical video, who has the time or concentration to read a long article — let alone a whole book? As we lose the ability to read long-form text, we might also be losing the capacity for democratic deliberation and self-governance. That’s the argument this week’s guest, the Times of London columnist James Marriott, makes in his recent book, ‘The New Dark Ages.’ He sits down with guest host Mary Harrington to discuss our return to oral culture, the political consequences and what we can learn from the medieval era about storing information in a digital world.
It was a fascinating conversation, but very long, and I kept getting distracted… my mind wandering hither, there, and yon. (That expression – “hither, there, and yon” – comes from a less post-literate era than ours.) I think I might have had an easier time of it had I just listened to the podcast instead of reading the transcript.
(I typically listen to podcasts while I’m out walking in the mornings, where the only real “distraction” is nature – flowers and birds and butterflies.. They actually help me focus.)
Harrington and Marriott started by discussing a recent report from the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), which found that literacy is declining or stagnating in most developed countries.
“We seem to be moving out of this culture of the written word into one that is more defined by the image and especially the moving image,” said Harrington, emphasizing that “post-literacy isn’t illiteracy… it’s more about the dominant medium of our culture.”
And, again, that dominant medium is moving images. Specifically, video.
(There was no mention of flowers, birds or butterflies.)
“Short-form video has eaten everybody’s capacity to concentrate,” said Mary Harrington. “I avoid short-form video for that reason. I find it does something very brain-rotting.”
(‘Except, perhaps, short form-video of flowers, birds, and butterflies,’ thought I. Those can be very soothing. Not at all brain-rotting.)
“Yes,” Marriot responded. “I think academics are finding that, for instance, they’ve spent their whole career assigning books like ‘Middlemarch’ and ‘Ulysses,’ and they’re having to stop because the kids just can’t get through them anymore.”
(Okay, can we just admit that kids could NEVER get through ‘Ulysses’? Never. Say what you will about short-form video, but that one is squarely on James Joyce.)
The podcasters continued expanding on their theme, saying that we are transforming from a culture whose primary way of interpreting our politics – and our very reality – is mediated by text into to one whose interpretation of politics and reality is mediated by the image.
Harrington and Marriott agree that it’s a crucial shift.
Of course, people have been talking about this shift – and worrying about it – since TV came along in the 1950s.
But, said Marriott, “… the decline of deep reading was really accelerated by the arrival of the smartphone in the early 2000s. That’s a major revolution, and so much has been said about that. . . . The point we’re at now is almost a revolution within a revolution. It’s become possible to watch video everywhere. And I think that has really, for a lot of people, meant that long-form text — or I increasingly think if you’re young, any text, any real reading — is just beginning to drain out of your life.”
Marriott believes that looking at the world before literacy can be a way to understand what the world after peak literacy might look like. He argues that such a world – the one we’re headed for – will be more like the pre-literate past: more mystical, more tribal, and more autocratic.
He says that while complex political ideas and ideologies depend on text for expression and comprehension, a post-literate politics will hinge more on large, colorful personalities and “characters.”
(Not to be confused with “character.” – The Management.)
Is it just me, or does it feel like we’re already there?
While reading this long conversation about post-literacy, I couldn’t help thinking it ironic that while we’re all busy frying our brains on short-form video and hurling insults in comment boxes, our Artificially Intelligent – excuse me, SUPER Intelligent – overlords seem to be getting wordier and more “literate” by the day. What’s that about? Are we destined for a world where humans communicate only through video shout-downs and simplistic memes while robots deliver grand oratory and write epic poetry for each other?
Does anybody see a problem with that?
As with the world, I don’t know where this column is going – my post-literate brain can barely form a thesis anymore, much less support it – so I’ll just circle back to where I started: We are so lucky to have the Pat Conroy Literary Festival here in our town… not to mention the Pat Conroy Literary Center that hosts it. This weekend, we’ll be celebrating books, the people who write them, and those of us who still love to read them.
Post-literacy may be the inevitable fate of humanity, but here in Beaufort, we’re not going down without a fight.
The Pat Conroy Literary Festival takes place October 22-25 at USCB Center for the Arts. For more information, visit www.patconroyliterarycenter.org
