Effects on society brought about by literacy

Humanity’s greatest natural asset, the one that has allowed us to succeed in a way that no other animal can surpass, is our intelligence and capacity for cooperation.  It is then only logical that a human technology which amplifies both of these traits would drive us to even greater success, as did the invention and subsequent spread of written language.  However, before it was near-universally adopted, literary technology had its critics –- as will anything that causes change in human societies.  Ultimately, however, reading and writing became a fundamental part of civilization as we know it, and new forms of communications technology will continue to do so as they appear.  

One fundamental building block of modern society is the sort of displaced memory provided by written language. 

 Of course, the changes brought about by literacy did not come without trade-offs.

Others have launched criticisms against reading based more upon the fear of change than biology.

Despite the fact that written language deviates our brains from their natural capabilities, our technology-augmented minds have allowed us to build a subjectively successful global society; Whether or not these augmentations have been objectively beneficial does not matter, as they have become a vital part of every modern sophisticated society.  From this, we can posit that new technologies of communication, such as the internet, will become a vital part of future societies, despite current criticisms and fears of the changes they bring about in our brains.

I kind of felt like I had wandered into an alternate universe upon reading Scarry's bit about flowers.  I haven't noticed that flowers are oft-used examples of imagination.  Nobody I know talks to excess about flowers or can describe them in great detail.  I can't imagine any flowers better than I can imagine horses.  It seems to me that she cherry-picked literary examples pertaining to flowers and wrote based upon her own imaginative preferences.

Scarry's statement that imaginings can be moved to anywhere and are not just limited to the forehead was somewhat of a revelation to me.  I suppose I've just never thought of doing that; every time I imagine things it's either up in my head, or superimposed on the inside of my eyes (so to speak).  Trying her method seemed to work, though, meaning that my idea of  imagination was based upon society's picture, rather than reality.  This has some interesting implications about the rest of the supposed structure of my mind, though it's impossible to tell what's accurate and what isn't.  It seems that this sort of thing would make study of cognition difficult; it's hard to tell which processes are biologically defined and which are shaped by outside factors, although perhaps this could be controlled for by testing across various different cultures.

Regarding the Schooler and Small article, the notion of "mind wandering" occurring against one's will is interesting to me.  They specifically say "Mind wandering may occur as a consequence of trying to avoid it".  Why does this happen?  It seems strange that our brains are capable of acting in ways that we don't wish them to, but everyone experiences this(Don't think of a pink rhinoceros).  Our limbs don't spastically flail without our express will (under normal circumstances in a healthy human); why does our brain seemingly act without our permission?  I think part of the answer to this lies in the fact that a lot of the decision making in our brain may happen on a subconscious level; there have been studies where researchers can predict a subject's decision based on subconscious activity before the subject themself is aware of deciding. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080414145705.htm)

Conjecture - This, to me, implies that our brains are biological organs, and that our notions of conscious control are mainly illusory.  Consciousness as humans know it is a fairly recent evolutionary development; however, for millions of years, our ancestors were making decisions without any consciousness required.  It's likely that these unconscious decision-making processes are still in place and dictate more of our choices that we'd like to think.

The criticisms of literature and reading as portrayed by Lamb and Johnson interested me because in modern times one never sees such things; books are pretty much always seen as something that will improve your mental faculties.  Lamb states that one of his acquaintances had stopped reading and shortly improved in originality; he also portrays books as a substitute for thinking.  This is interesting to me, because I've always thought that books had the opposite effect.  The main thing I look to glean from books is new concepts; I think I would be a lot less 'original' if I didn't read (I don't think anybody is really original - original in my book is the ability to combine ideas of others in novel ways).  Books as a substitute for thinking I can see, because it's difficult to think deeply and read at the same time.  Once again, though, my thoughts would be a lot more limited without the influence of books, so I don't think it would be a good thing to sacrifice reading for more thinking-time.

Johnson talks about his contemporaries who think books have a negative effect on reasoning ability or who say that reading too many books will have an adverse effect on one's own ability to communicate.  The first point I completely disagree with, but the latter I can find some merit in.  It's something that I've seen others mention here and there as well as noticed in myself; if I read or otherwise consume too much of some form of entertainment in a day, my social skills decline.

The main thing that interested me about these criticisms of reading was how they compared to current criticisms of the internet; it's a pretty common idea that the internet rots your brain/attention span/memory.  Both books and the internet have been seen as something that decreases the natural function of the brain.  I'd say that reading books are considered to have a positive effect in modern times, but the internet hasn't been around long enough to enjoy similar opinions.  Maybe, because both books and the internet are something 'unnatural' (something our brains didn't originally evolve to cope with), the changes they wrought that deviated from natural functioning were seen as negative, simply because they were changes.  The changes that books wrought are mostly seen as positive now, and I wonder if the same might be true of the internet some day.  Maybe the changes the internet are causing aren't negative so much as they are simply different for us.  Of course, the flip side to this is that maybe the changes books wrought were negative, but we've gotten so used to that sort of intelligence now that we consider it better.