What if you forget to read: Once again

I know my thread was deleted earlier.  I don't  know why.
May be it was misunderstood.

The question is from the point of view that we have reading obsession. Started from usenet, to news, chat,emails, internet forums, and recently weblogs.

Lots of stuff to read.

An average techie here spends more than 1 hour a day  in just reading and replying the things on the Internet.

Do You think all that is essential?

What type of non-written essentials we are/will be missing in the future. just because we have perceived majority of information coming from Internet?

How your world would be different if you cannot read and all the other people around you will be able to read?

I really think that it is thought provoking for very literate people who cannot think otherwise.

easy
Friday, October 10, 2003

Are you asking what would the world be like if we had no written communication?

There was this award winning documentary on deaf people, and these implants (coklear? some name for some bone or organ in the ear). Deaf culture, and deaf language. These little pocket communities on Long Island. Many of them don't go to college, don't really read, yet they function in a modern society. If you're really interested in this kind of thing, you should hunt down this documentary.

Mark T A W .com
Friday, October 10, 2003

Well if you want to know what it feels like, go to a country that uses a different script like China, Japan or Korea.

Otherwise, if you were illiterate you'd not really know what you were missing out on because you'd avoid all occasions where it came up. 

And you wouldn't be developing software, you'd have a manual job, if you had a job at all.

If you're really talking about losing the function of recognising characters then yes people can suffer that, with strokes for example.  Quite often those same people then hear words in some kind of synaesthesic way, as in colours or the days of the week or internal images.

Its an interesting irony that we generally learn about how the brain works by looking at those that don't. 

We are blind clock repairers trying to reconstitute time by assembling the cogs of a clock that has spilled out onto the floor.

Ok, I really need coffee now.

Simon Lucy
Friday, October 10, 2003

Bear in mind that for much of human history illieteracy was the norm, and people were not notably impaired.

Illiterate socieites use certain skills we have left to atrophy. Because there is no written record they must rely much more on memory, and stories are often repeated more and more often - also when you need to "look soemthing up" you have to go and ask the person who knows, so social adeptness becomes part of knowledge.

Reading and writing are technological skills that make recording information a lot easier. /As a side-effect they also made it much easier to gain knowledge of other more distant cultures. I can't imagine life without reading, having only ever experienced a year being able to speak and unable to read, but I have no doubt that there has been a trade-off involved in the use of the skill.

Having spent many years in two countries where the scriptswere initially incomprehensible, I can say that it makes a considerable difference even when you wouldn't understand the words in the Latin alphabet.

And as for life without botherig to read anything else than SMS I believe High School students in most countries could answer your question :)

A

Stephen Jones
Friday, October 10, 2003

I'm not sure the other responses are addressing the question. 

As I read the original post, Easy is asking if the hour spent reading about technical or programming topics is worth the time invested.  Does it add to your ability to do your job well?

For me it does.  I write a fair amount of Oracle PL/SQL code and there have been a lot of changes in available functions and utilities since I started.  By reading the work of people smarter or more experienced than I am, always expand my abilities.  The result is I'm considered very good at what I do.  Some of it comes from native talent, but alot comes from standing on the shoulders of giants.

I will say I spend less than a 1/2 hour daily doing this kind of research, though.

Rob H
Friday, October 10, 2003

There is necessity, and there is desire.

Is all this reading *necessary*?  Perhaps not.  Must all actions be based on need?

The Pedant, Brent P. Newhall
Friday, October 10, 2003

Of course all action doesn't have to be based on need.

I see a lot of useless activity all around me.

Joe AA
Friday, October 10, 2003

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