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Nadin, Mihai, 1938-

"The Civilization of Illiteracy"

The photographic camera-drawing with light on film-the
electronic camera, the television camera, the scanner, and the
digitizer are, effectively, means for drawing and for processing
the image in full control of all its components. A sound level
can easily be added, and indeed sound augments the expressive
power of images. Interactivity, involved in the design process,
adds the dimension of change. That literacy, as one of the many
languages of the civilization of illiteracy, uses design in its
various forms to further its own program is clear. Probably less
clear is that the literate experience is itself changed through
such instances. After all, literacy is the civilization that
started with the conventions of writing and grew to the one Book
open to all possible interpretations, as these were generated in
the attempt to effectively conjure its meaning in new pragmatic
contexts. Literacy subjected to all the means that become
possible in the civilization of illiteracy, in particular to
those that design affords, results in the infinity of books,
printed for the potential individual reader (or the very
limited readership that a title or journal tends to have) who
might finally give it one interpretation (equal to none) by
placing it, unopened and unread, on a bookshelf. The radical
description given above might still be far away from today's
reality, but the dynamics of change points in this direction.


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