Post-literate society

A post-literate society is a hypothetical society in which multimedia technology has advanced to the point where literacy, the ability to read or write, is no longer necessary or common. The term appears as early as 1962 in Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy.^[1] Many science-fiction societies are post-literate, as in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Dan Simmons' novel Ilium, and Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story.

A post-literate society is different from a pre-literate one, as the latter has not yet created writing and communicates orally (oral literature and oral history, aided by art, dance, and singing), and the former has replaced the written word with recorded sounds (CDs, audiobooks), broadcast spoken word and music (radio), pictures (JPEG) and moving images (television, film, MPG, streaming video, video games, virtual reality). A post-literate society might still include people who are aliterate, who know how to read and write but choose not to. Most if not all people would be media literate, multimedia literate, visually literate, and transliterate.

In his book The Empire of Illusion, Chris Hedges charts the recent, sudden rise of post-literate culture within the world culture as a whole.^[2]

References[]

Footnotes[]

^ McLuhan, Marshall (2014). The Gutenberg galaxy : the making of typographic man. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9781442612693. OCLC 993539009.
^ Hedges, Chris (2009). Empire of illusion : the end of literacy and the triumph of spectacle. New York: Nation Books. ISBN 9781568584379. OCLC 301887642.

Bibliography[]

The Dawn of the Post-literate Age, by Patrick Tucker, THE FUTURIST Magazine, November–December 2009. http://www.wfs.org/node/1000
The Gutenberg Galaxy, Marshall McLuhan, University of Toronto Press, 1962
The Empire of Illusion, Chris Hedges, 2009, ISBN 978-1-56858-437-9

This science fiction–related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by .

This culture-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by .

[1] McLuhan, Marshall (2014). The Gutenberg galaxy : the making of typographic man. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9781442612693. OCLC 993539009.

[2] Hedges, Chris (2009). Empire of illusion : the end of literacy and the triumph of spectacle. New York: Nation Books. ISBN 9781568584379. OCLC 301887642.

[1]

[2]

v t Literacy
Learning	Adolescent literacy Emergent literacy Family literacy Functional illiteracy Phonics Post-literacy Whole language
Locations	List of countries by literacy rate India Bihar New Zealand Tokelau Romania United States
Institutions	International Literacy Association International Literacy Day National Council of Teachers of English No Child Left Behind Act
People	Marie Clay Ruth Johnson Colvin Paulo Freire James Paul Gee Griffith Jones Frank Laubach Brian Street
Other types	Agricultural Braille Carbon Computer Critical Cultural Data Diaspora Ecological Electracy Emotional Faith Financial Geo-literacy Graph Health Information Information literacies Information and media Legal Media Mental health Multiliteracies Musical Numeracy Object Oracy Power Physical Racial Religious Scientific Social Statistical Technological Transliteracy Visual Web
Related	Aliteracy Asemic writing Children's literature Dick and Jane Dyslexia Literacy test Media consumption Orality Oral literature Post-literate society Reading Writing Writing system

Post-literate society

Contents

See also[]

References[]

Footnotes[]

Bibliography[]