Materialism 2, the Majority World.

Genetic evolution is a very slow process. Adapting to a new or changing environment has to be progressive. For most species change is extinction, which limits them to a particular habitat. They cannot leave it, and if is modified they disappear. Technological evolution changed the rules. It not only shortened the time scale, but it actually depended on new conditions and materials for its progression. Humans swarmed over the five continents and adapted their life styles to the resources they found. For a long time human groups used very similar tools. New techniques had prolonged developments and had time to circulate. The domestication of plants and animals was universal, as were the carving and polishing of stone, ivory and bone. Pottery made a break, because clay and fire-wood are not found together everywhere, but metallurgy was the first act of an ever widening technology gap. Copper, zinc and tin are quite rare, are usually in mineral form and are often deep underground. This meant that a very small number of humans could make and use tools, weapons and protection made of brass and bronze. They were the demi-gods of legends. They were probably the historic Accadian, Cretan and Mycenaean, and the builders of pyramids, of tumuli and stone circles. Then came iron, whose ore is commonplace. At Hallstatt in the Austrian Alps, the coincidence of Neolithic salt mines, rich and abundant iron ore and accessible lignite produced the first known Iron Age society. Since then three thousand years have passed, and technological creation is still the source of wealth and power, and the motor of social change. 

Another divisive technology had preceded metallurgy and taken on primitive forms in the earliest urban civilisations. A representation of words and numbers was needed as soon as land was parcelled out into individual holdings. The transmission of communal property can be a spoken process accompanying the succession of generations. The transmission of personal property is best done in writing, a record of the proprietor’s wishes that can be referred to after his death, and that also applies for contracts. Urbanisation resulted in writing just about everywhere, whereas phonetic alphabets kept to a small geographical space, appearing in Canaan and spreading from there to the Mediterranean Basin. Phonetic alphabets not only facilitate the learning of reading and writing, they also make printing with movable type a much easier process. In fact, the Gutenberg revolution could only have occurred in Europe, and its propagation is still far from over. Literacy remains a privilege. 

A long time ago, technology began dividing humanity into the have and the have not, and the gap has widened ever since. This differentiation happened between members of a society and between competing societies. As long as writing was done by hand, reading remained an elitist occupation that was similar the world over. The mass production of printing put an end to this exclusive access, and adopted the spoken idiom to appeal to a wider public. Despite the phonetic alphabet, literacy largely excluded the working classes until the 19^th century and was only generalised in the 20^th, just in time to be confronted by the wave of audio and video that has swept the world. The return of sounds and images after the mental voices and pictures of print had a stunning effect on the literate, but the Majority World of illiteracy was only impacted by the visual novelty, as the inner voice of reading was absent. Literacy modifies the message carried by more recent media, with regards to illiteracy. There are two different receptions. The transformation of sounds into signs and back again builds connections between sight and hearing that only take place in the mind. Eyes and ears are separate sense organs that must learn to cooperate inside the brain. This cerebral gymnastic increases participation, objectifies emotions and cools the message. 

Phonetic alphabets make reading and writing easy skills to acquire. Chinese children, who still have to learn numerous ideograms, reach the age of nine without having studied anything else. Literacy is also simplified when a nation is linguistically homogenous. India’s diversity of tongues is a huge handicap for general literacy. The Arabic speaking world has a common language and a phonetic alphabet. Situated at the junction of East and West, it was the hive of inventiveness that inspired the European Renaissance. But, after being ravaged by the Mongols, it was subjected to imperial dominion by the Ottomans and, after 1920, by Europeans and Americans. Nationalism was suppressed along with spoken idioms. Colonial rule and central power meant that the Book was not published in idiomatic form, and no national churches emerged. Reading Koranic Verses and writing Classical Arabic had little to do with the languages spoken and heard, barely more than Medieval Church Latin had in Europe. The sultan’s rule prevented change. It averted the birth of nations and the spread of literacy though all the tools were at hand. (Admittedly, classic Arabic calligraphy lends itself less easily than Greek and Latin letters to movable type setting. It has had to be simplified for print). Even to-day some Arab nations have low rates of literacy because of poverty and the corrupt use of public money. And Koranic schools are of little use, because they teach the orthodox classical version of the Book. 

Some parts of the world had developed primitive forms of writing, and some had no writing at all, when Europeans conquered and colonised them. Some languages disappeared along with those who spoke them, but the others survived and have been transcribed into phonemes by generations of ethnologists. All languages are now written, but vast numbers cannot read the signs. They can access audio and video but not print. A few decades ago, radio and TV seemed destined to submerge the written media. Reading was considered a passé occupation, and the march to universal literacy got bogged down. However, new technology has brought back writing with a vengeance. The Web has assembled trillions of pages of text that can be read almost anywhere, and Twitter has transformed the way news are circulated, in both private and public spheres. Reading and writing skills are more indispensable than ever before. And yet literacy has regressed in many parts of the world, because of prolonged conflicts and government restrictions, and because Hertzian media do not need schooling and are easily controlled. The ideological and political decisions to abandon the spread of literacy have had disastrous results. They have widened the technology gap into a chasm, and have played heedlessly with dangerous tools. The Reichssender was instrumental to the rise of National Socialism in Germany. Just as Radio Mille Collines was instrumental to the Rwandan genocide of 1994. And to-day’s extremist movements everywhere prefer audio and video messages. They have, as always, a predilection for the vituperative harangue of audible words, and shun the participative coolness of print. Domination no longer needs universal literacy, as it is easier to control the diffusion of sound and images than that of print. But reading and writing are an essential element of human technological evolution, and have been for millennia. Why should half of humanity (2/3?) be deprived of that birthright?