The new
political condition of the individual in modern society also has
something in common with the characteristics of human
interaction and the means of this interaction. But again, we do
not really know whether the new socio-economic dynamics resulted
from our intention to accelerate interactions, or the
acceleration in human interaction is only the background (or a
marginal effect) of a more encompassing change of our condition
under circumstances making this change necessary. My hypothesis
is that a dramatic change in the scale of humankind and in the
nature of the relation between humans and their natural and
cultural environments might explain the new socio-economic
dynamics.
Loaded literacy
Languages, or any other form of expression and communication, are
meaningful only to the extent that they become part of our
existence. When people do not know how to spell words that refer
to their existence, we suspect that something related to the
learning of spelling (usually the learner) does not function as
we assumed it should. (Obviously, literacy is more than
spelling.) School, family, new habits-such as extensive
television viewing, comics reading, obsessive playing of computer
games, Internet surfing, to name some of the apparent
culprits-come under scrutiny. Culture, prejudice, or fear of the
unknown prevents us from asking whether spelling is still a
necessity.
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