The following made an appearance in my inbox as a result of one of my many list subscriptions. It's titled "A Holiday Greeting - The Pearls of Adult Literacy Education." Here's just a tiny highlight from the full version:

When you send your Holiday Greeting cards, do you use cards with your name printed on them, or do you sign them personally? It is easy to skip this personal touch, and so much more efficient to just have the cards printed. But when we do this, we run the risk of forgetting the deep meaning that being able to sign one’s name has had in the history of adult literacy and the struggle for civil rights. Like a chain of pearls, a major part of this history of adult illiterates and their passion for learning to write their names can be traced by following the teaching methods of three great women leaders of adult literacy education in the United States.

I don't get printed holiday cards, nor am I sure that the use of printed cards is the biggest issue around forgetting the importance of literacy. What really irks me is that I was just reading a great weblog entry on the subject of literacy and how the ability to move from an oral society to a written one was a paradigm shift equivalent to making use of fire. Do you think I could find this either via Google or Daypop? Noooooo. What a bummer. I remember the author mentioned Walter Ong, who wrote "Orality and Literacy" and he/she talked about a documentary where an indigenous people were shown the "magic" of the written word via a pseudo-game of telephone.

In any case, this just reminds me that there are two things I'm interested in regarding information design. The first is access and the second is access. I tend to focus on the readability/legibility/usability version of access, but every once in a while the literacy/digital divide/disease of familiarity version demands some attention.

07:54 PM | linkme | home