Literacy challenges the
reliability of memory across the board, even when memory is the
repository of facts through which people establish themselves in
the world of work. Professionals ranging from doctors, lawyers,
and military commanders to teachers, nurses, and office
personnel rely more on memory than do factory workers on an
assembly line. The paradox is that the more educated a
professional is, the less he or she needs to rely on literacy in
the exercise of his or her profession, except in the initial
learning process, which is made through books. With the advent
of video and cassette tapes or disks, with digital storage and
networks, literacy loses its supremacy as transmitter of
knowledge.
What makes language necessary is also what explains its history
and its characteristics. Language came to life in a process
through which humans projected themselves into the reality of
their existence, identified themselves in respect to natural and
social environments, and followed a path of linear growth.
Orality testifies to limited, circular experiences but
corresponds to an unsettled human being in search of well being
and security. It relied on memory for the most part and was
assimilated in ritual. The written appeared in the context of
several fundamental changes: diversified human praxis,
settlement, and a market that outgrew barter, each related and
influencing the other.
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