I might agree with an assertion that written text would be less important in the future, but I don't think it at all plausible that it will cease to exist. There are very few cultural things that we've completely abandoned, ever. Also this "universal symbols will have no grammar" thing is just nonsense. Grammar (in the super-extended descriptive linguistics sense) is intrinsic to all forms of human communication. Art teachers talk about grammars of shapes and presentation.
Yeah, he actually said that. Let me go find the reference; it is utter horsecrap.
We will definitely continue to use visual symbols and icons as a way to store and retrieve information and will definitely have to know how to draw and interpret them. But we won't be reading and writing these symbols and icons, and they won't constitute a written language--even if they're strung or linked together. Reading and writing are activities that apply only to a written language; however, visual symbols and icons are not written language. A written language needs rules of syntax and semantics that tell how to string its symbols together and how to interpret the meaning of such strings. There is no single set of rules that tells how to combine and interpret universal symbols and icons. The first pictographs of Chinese language may have begun as solitary "universal" symbols, but they became a language only after they were linked according to syntactic and semantic rules. Our ancestors' cave and rock drawings contained many visual symbols and
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Pretty much. That, and his holding out for "VIVO" technology to save the poor and illiterate of the world (who don't want to learn how to read and write--has he actually surveyed EVERY illiterate person in the world, or just decided they're all lazy slobs who don't want to do something that might be hard? ugh) seems patently ridiculous when you could, you know, have someone literate teach them to read/write with a flat patch of ground and a stick. In fact, I'd say learning how to operate a VIVO would be harder than figuring out how to draw shapes in the dirt
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Holey logic, Batman! Driven to speak!=Driven to express ideas and emotions. Hoo boy. The math answer does make me wonder if it's a well-written hoax. Fun times, there.
I wish. I'm 99.9% sure he's serious, though. My undergraduate minor was philosophy, and philosophers really do write stuff that stupid and unsupported. (And I'd think he wouldn't've spent as long writing the actual book if it were a hoax--I looked it up on Amazon and it does in fact exist. And it's not interesting enough to be a labor of love/work of art like Why Cats PaintAlso his comments on the success of radio in the face of television are SO STUPID. Apparently he's never turned on the TV and then listened to it while doing something in his house. Or realized that watching TV while driving = traffic hazard. Or thought about the fact that portable TVs generally suck because they have too damn many parts, while portable radios do not. Or anything about bandwidth for transmission and what's needed in a receiver for decent-quality radio vs. TV reception
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The math comment is the stupidest thing ever. Just wow.
Secondly, I wonder why this person thinks cultures came up with written text in the first place. Hell, at one point all we had was an oral culture. There is obviously a reason why we made the switch.
"I'm not a mathematician, but mathematicians will totally dig this! Numbers are so bad for expressing mathematical concepts, and I only say that because I sure don't understand math when it's expressed in numbers. Or, like, at all."
I am curious about what non-numeric visual systems he's referring to. If it's anything like I think it is, he's probably talking about a representative system that still RELIES on written numerals to explain the underpinnings. A graph of a function with no written accompaniment does not tell people unambiguously what the function actually IS.
And apparently, we came up with written text because the period between 3000 BC or whatever and today was a really tough time, due to us having a farming culture and some other random crap. Somehow current societies are not so complex that written language would be an aide to anyone.
Also, you know, kids are totally getting back into that oral culture thing with cell phones and voice recognition. LOL!
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We will definitely continue to use visual symbols and icons as a way to store and retrieve information and will definitely have to know how to draw and interpret them. But we won't be reading and writing these symbols and icons, and they won't constitute a written language--even if they're strung or linked together. Reading and writing are activities that apply only to a written language; however, visual symbols and icons are not written language. A written language needs rules of syntax and semantics that tell how to string its symbols together and how to interpret the meaning of such strings. There is no single set of rules that tells how to combine and interpret universal symbols and icons. The first pictographs of Chinese language may have begun as solitary "universal" symbols, but they became a language only after they were linked according to syntactic and semantic rules. Our ancestors' cave and rock drawings contained many visual symbols and ( ... )
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Secondly, I wonder why this person thinks cultures came up with written text in the first place. Hell, at one point all we had was an oral culture. There is obviously a reason why we made the switch.
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I am curious about what non-numeric visual systems he's referring to. If it's anything like I think it is, he's probably talking about a representative system that still RELIES on written numerals to explain the underpinnings. A graph of a function with no written accompaniment does not tell people unambiguously what the function actually IS.
And apparently, we came up with written text because the period between 3000 BC or whatever and today was a really tough time, due to us having a farming culture and some other random crap. Somehow current societies are not so complex that written language would be an aide to anyone.
Also, you know, kids are totally getting back into that oral culture thing with cell phones and voice recognition. LOL!
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