Our literate rules
On Alexander Graham Bell, social guardrails, and why it's so disorienting to live in a world where practically everyone can read practically anything
We indulge quite a bit in wide-eyed awe at the pace of technological progress in our world today, but it's worth noting that not all progress is advanced by technology. Just 75 years ago, more than half of the world's adult population was illiterate. Half. And that was a colossal increase over 1900, when four out of every five adults worldwide were illiterate.
■ These facts do overlap with technology, too, because prior to Thomas Edison's invention of the phonograph and Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone in the 1870s, nobody had ever heard another human voice recorded or transmitted over either time or distance. (Recordings were made as early as the 1850s, but nobody had figured out a playback mechanism).
■ So we must consider that the world of just 150 years ago -- merely five familial generations, by the usual estimation -- was overwhelmingly limited to what was transmitted orally. Some specific countries attained higher literacy rates earlier than others, but access to the basic tools of literacy was frequently controlled as a means of subjugation in the world of not that long ago.
■ A world of oral communications is very different from a literate one. When we think we are among friends who will probably forget most of our scurrilous rumors and unhinged overreactions, we say different things than what we might choose to chisel in stone or publish in a newspaper. The habits are different, the guardrails are lower, and the discipline is far less in evidence.
■ It wasn't a mistake to bring literacy to the masses; it was one of the greatest victories in the history of striving for human potential. But it hasn't been a long time for the new conditions to prevail and retrain culture.
■ In 1960, the world adult literacy rate was 42%. And just three or four decades later, we suddenly had the Internet, on which anything could be published or shared in an instant with the entire globe, in printed words or in audio (or video). The tools at hand encourage instant reactions, big emotions, quick snippets, and hot takes -- effectively reverting back to the pre-1870s world of oral communications, but suddenly with a permanent (and worldwide) record.
■ As we marvel at what technology can do, it's equally important to ponder what behaviors we indulge and encourage with our social rules. As we have become more literate, we should have been freeing ourselves from what dragged down our ancestors in the earlier era of oral transmission -- rumors, bias, and tribalism. Every word spoken, sentence written, or act undertaken constructs the world to follow. Never in all of history has that impact been magnified like it is today.
