The Civilization of Illiteracy

by Mihai Nadin

Drawing starts with seeing and leads to a way of envisioning and understanding the world different from the understanding filtered through language. From a cognitive viewpoint, drawing implies that persons constituting their identity in the act of drawing know the inside and the outside of what they render. To draw requires that things grow from their inside and take shape as active entities. Visible and invisible parts interact in drawing, surface and volume intersect, voids and fills extend in the visual expression, dynamically complementing each other. Each line of a drawing makes sense only in relation to the others. In contrast to words and sentences, elements of a drawing conjure understanding only through the drawing. Visual representation, as opposed to language expression, attains coherence as a whole, and the whole is configurational. One can write the word table without ever experiencing the object denominated. Extracted from direct or mediated experiences, knowledge about the object and its functions is a prerequisite for drawing an old table or conceiving a new one. To design means to express in a language that involves rendering. It also involves understanding that practical expectations are connected to the projected object. Consequently, to design means to experience the table in advance of its physical embodiment. Thus designing is the virtual practical experience, at the borderline between what is and what new experiences of self-constitution require.

In designing, people virtually project their own biological and cultural characteristics in whatever they conceive. This corresponds to the reality that design is derived from practical experiences, extending what is possible to what is desirable. Functionality expresses this condition, though only partially. With the emergence of conditions embodied in the underlying structure reflected in literacy, image and literate renditions-statements of goal and purpose, descriptions of means, procedures for evaluation-met. Literacy then effected changes in the condition of design. These are reflected as general expectations of permanence, universality, dualism, centralism, and hierarchy. International style-an expression that really covers more than the name of a style-reflects these literate expectations from design.

Is drawing natural? The meaning of such a question can be conjured only if articulated with its pendant: Is literacy unnatural or artificial? Everything already stated about drawing implies that it is not natural, though it is closer to what it represents than words are. Except for metaphoric qualifications, there is no such thing as drawing an abstraction of drawing, although there is abstract drawing. Through drawing, persons constitute themselves as having the ability to see, to understand (for instance, the invisible part of objects, how light affects an image, how color or texture makes an object seem lighter or rounder), to relate to the pragmatic context as definitory of the meaning of both the object-real or imagined-and the drawing. Different contexts make different ways of drawing possible. Disconnected from the context, drawing is almost like the babble of a child, or like a fragmented, unfinished expression. Vitruvius had a culture of drawing very different from that of the many architects who followed him. Critics who compared him to Le Corbusier and his architectural renditions, to the architects of post-structuralism, and to the deconstructivists and deconstructivist designers declared the drawings of these architects to be ugly, bad, or inappropriate (Tom Wolfe went on record with this). At this instance, drawing ceases to be an adjunct to art; it petitions its own legitimacy.

If we ignore the pragmatic context and the major transition from a design initially influenced by language-Vitruvius wrote a monumental work on architecture-the statement stands. But what we face here is a process in time: from design influenced by the pragmatics embodied in Vitruvius' work, to design subordinated to literacy, and finally to design struggling for emancipation as a new language, in which the critical component is as present as the constructive impulse to change the world.

Design carries over many formal requirements from practical experiences subordinated to literacy. But there is also an underlying conflict between design and language, moreover between design and literacy. This conflict was never resolved inside the experience of designing. In society, literacy imposed its formative structure on education, and what resulted was design education with a strong liberal arts component. Needless to say, designers, whether professionals in the field or students (designers-to-be), resented and resent the assumption that their trade needs to be elevated to the pedestal of the eternal values embodied in literacy. Instead of being stimulated to discover the need for literacy-based values in concrete contexts, design and design education are subjected to the traditional smorgasbord of history, language, philosophy, a little science, and many free choices. Its own theoretic level, or at least the quest for a theory, is discarded as frivolous. Moreover, the elements grouped under intuition are systematically explained away, instead of being stimulated.

Whereas the context of education allows for the artificial maintenance of literacy- based training programs in design, the broader context of pragmatic experiences confirms the dynamic changes design brought about since the profession ascertained its identity. The conflict between training and engaging prompted efforts to free design from constraints that affect its very nature: How do we get rid of the mechanical components of design (paste-up, rendering, model making)? These efforts came from outside the educational framework and were stimulated by the general dynamics of change from the pragmatics of literacy to the pragmatics of the civilization of illiteracy. The change brought about the emergence of new design tools that open fresh perspectives for the expression of design: animation, interactivity, and simulation. It also encouraged designers to research within the realm of their domain, to inquire into the many aspects of their concern, and to express their findings in new designs. The computer desktop and various rapid prototyping tools brought execution closer to designers. It also introduced new mediating layers in the design process.

Breakaway

The majority of all artifacts in use today are either the result of the design revolution at the beginning of the 20th century, or of efforts to redesign everyday objects for use in new contexts of practical experiences. From the telephone to the television set, from the automobile to the airplane and helicopter, from the lead pencil to the fountain pen and disposable ball-point pen, from the typewriter to the word processor, from cash registers to laser readers, from stoves to microwave ovens-the list can go on and on-a new world has been designed and manufactured. The next world is already knocking at the door with robots, voice commanded machines, and even interconnected intelligent systems that we might use, or that might use us, in some form. The steam and pneumatic engines fired by coal, oil, or gas are being replaced by highly efficient, compact, electric or magneto-electric engines integrated in the machines they drive, controlled by sophisticated electronic devices.

There is almost nothing stemming from the age that made literacy necessary that will not be replaced by higher efficiency alternatives, by structurally different means. What about the technology of literacy? One can only repeat what once was a good advertisement line: "The typewriter is to the pen what the sewing machine (Remember the machine driven by foot power?) is to the needle." Remington produced the beautiful Sholes and Glidden typewriter in the 1870's. It was difficult to decide whether the ornate object, displaying hand-stenciled polychrome flowers, belonged in the office or in a Victorian study. Now it is a museum piece. Compare it to the word processor of today. Its casing might survive the renewal cycle of two to three years that hardware goes through. The chip's processing abilities will double every eighteen months, in accordance with Moore's Law. The software, the heart and mind of the machine, is improved almost continuously. Now it provides for checking spelling, contains dictionaries, checks syntax and suggests stylistic changes. Soon it will take dictation. Then it will probably disappear; first, because the computer can reside on the network and be used as needed, and second, the written message will no longer be appropriate in the new context. Those who question this rather pedestrian prediction might want to ask themselves some other questions: Where is the ornamental ink stand, the beautiful designs by Fabergé and Tiffany? Where are the fountain pens, the Gestetner machines? Carbon paper? Are they replaced by miniature tape recorders or pocket computers, by integrated miniature machines that themselves integrate the wireless telephone? Are they replaced by the computer, the Internet browser, and digital television? Edward Bulwer-Lytton gave us the slogan "The pen is mightier than the sword." Today, the function of each is different from what it was when he referred to them. They became collectibles. The disposable pen is symptomatic of a civilization that discards not only the pen, but also writing.

The breakaway of design occurs first of all at structural levels. It is one thing to write a letter, manuscript, or business plan with a pencil, quite another to do the same on a typewriter, and even more different to use a word processor for these purposes, or to rely on the Internet. The cognitive implications of the experience-what kinds of processes take place in the mind-cause the output to be different in each case. No medium is passive. In each medium, previous experiences and patterns of interaction are accumulated. The more interaction there is to a process, and sometimes to a collaborative effort, the more the condition of writing itself changes. We can think of messages addressed to many people at once. Think of the Mullah chanting evening prayers at the top of a minaret; or of the priest addressing a congregation; of the president of a nation using the powerful means of television, or of a spammer on the Internet, distributing messages to millions of e-mail addresses. Each communication is framed in a context constituting its parameters of pre-understanding. To the majority, spam means no more than chopped meat in a can. Even today, over 50% of the world's people have never used a telephone. And with some 50 million people on the Internet, Netizenship is more vision than reality.