Language is a form of social memory. When saying something or listening to some utterance, we assume a uniform use of words and of higher level linguistic entities. As stored testimony to similar practical experiences, language, stabilized in literacy, became a medium for averaging them. The patterns of human relations captured in language make people aware, in retrospect, of the relevance of these patterns to human efficiency. So it seems that we constitute ourselves as our own observations about how we interact. These observations are identified as cognition, because it is through interaction that we know each other and know how, what, and when our immediate and less immediate needs are satisfied. The paradigm of literacy asserts that human self-constitution takes place in language, moreover that it could effectively happen only in language, expressed in written forms and made available through reading. Indeed, knowledge was derived from praxis implying human interaction that integrated language-based exchanges of information. This knowledge shaped political, ideological, religious, and economic experiences, as well as efforts to improve the technology used, and even broaden the scientific perspective. The dimension of future is intrinsic to life, from where it extends to language and literacy, as it extends to artifacts, work, and pragmatic expectations.
The practical experience of language, as any other semiotic practical experience, embodies agreements regarding the nature and condition of whatever is constituted in language, human identity included. The projection of the biological and cultural characteristics on the world of our life and action establishes elements of reference. The ability to see, hear, and smell, and the ability to use tools are acknowledged as humans interact. Ability and performance differ widely. Self-evaluation and evaluation by others in the process of defining and achieving goals of common interest are quite distinct. Language mediates, hence it makes commitments part of the experience. When these are not carried through, language can become a substitute medium for confrontation.
Experiences of agreement and experiences of confrontation are part of the patterns of interrelationship that define how the language of individuals and the language of the community are related. Socialization of language leads to paradoxical situations: humans self-constituted in the language experience perceive their own language as though confrontation is not among themselves, but among their languages. Only a few years ago, we heard about how much Americans and Russians liked each other, although the language of politics and ideology was one of conflict. Now we hear how Ossies (East Germans) and Wessies (West Germans) have strong feelings about each other (one side is described as lazy, the other as arrogant; one side as cultivated, the other as ignoramuses; some as honest, the others as corrupt) although the language they both share is the same (though not quite). Iranians and Arabs, Armenians and Georgians, and Serbs and Croats could add to this subject more than we want to know about the language of prejudice.
Shortly before Malthus issued his equation of population growth in relation to the growth of subsistence means, Rousseau stated a law of the inverse proportion between size of population and political freedom. Rousseau ascertained that the strength of those exercising power over others increases as the number of those subjected to power increases. The inverse proportion has to do with the influence each individual has in the political process-the more people, the weaker each voice. Scale is critical, but so is understanding the relation between the underlying structure of the pragmatics that defines the role of language and how this role is carried out. Practical experiences of power concentration are supported by literacy, whose implicit structure and expectation is centralism and representation. Literacy generates instances of conflict as well as institutions that regulate the nature of agreements and disagreements. Bureaucracy, the expression of these institutions, is the offspring of the incestuous relation between literacy and democracy.
A new scale of humankind, for which literacy-based practical experiences are not adequate, and within which democracy-the power of the people-can no longer be exercised (as Rousseau pointed out), poses many challenges. Among them: What, if anything, should replace literacy? What could replace democracy? How do we free ourselves from the choking grip of bureaucracy? Even before attempting an answer, the notion that the cultural experience of literacy and the social experience of democracy have reached their potential and are due for replacements has to be understood.
In a different vein, the understanding that literacy participates in power, of which people become aware in a given cultural and social context, triggers another reaction: means of expression and communication different from those originating under the aegis of literacy participate in pragmatic processes that result in access to power. It is not what a political leader says, but how. Powerful images, sophisticated directing, and inspired stage design or selection of backdrops become the message itself. This is why "The message is the medium," a not irreverent reversal of McLuhan's famous formula, phrases the altered nature of the relation between language and the world. Interactions in the networked world exemplify this rephrasing even better. The redefined relationship between the many languages of our new practical experiences and reality is expressed in the means and values of the civilization of illiteracy.
Written into the pompous architecture of Mitterand's palaces and monuments in Paris, and into the "new" Berlin reflecting the medieval notion of centralized power-to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars-the message of literacy is turned into the medium of brick-and-mortar. In an age of task distribution and decentralization, the appropriate alternative is virtual environments and an advanced infrastructure for access to cognition. "The message is the medium" translates into the requirement of overcoming infatuation with the past, never mind trying to reinvent it. The statement demands that we create alternative media that support the empowerment of individuals, not the further consolidation of power structures that were relevant in the past but which prevent the unfolding of the future.
From democracy to media-ocracy
Democracy is a domain of expectations. Humans constitute themselves as members of a democracy to the extent that their practical experiences acknowledge equality, freedom, and self-determination. The concept of democracy has varied enormously over time. In ancient societies, it acknowledged equality of the demos, and that free men-not slaves, not women-were entitled to vote. Subject to many emancipations, democracy denotes the right of people to elect their government (based on the general will set forth by the Jacobins, as mentioned above). How this self- government actually works-through direct or indirect representation, in forms of government based on the division of power between the executive and legislative, or under monarchies-is itself a matter of practical experiences pertinent to democracy. The democracy of human misery and neglect is quite different from the democracy of affluence. Equal access to work, education, health care, and art, and equal access to drugs, murder, joblessness, ignorance, and disease are far from being similar. A small town-meeting in Vermont or one in a Swiss canton, effectively governing life in town, is quite different from the forms of political self-governance in countries where the central power effectively overrides any self-governance. The same can be said of the overriding power of other factors-the economy, for instance.
Democracy is a major form of social and political experience. The power of the majority, expressed in votes, is only one of its possible manifestations. When only a minority of the population votes, the so-called majority ceases to be representative, no matter what the formal rules say. We live by democratic practices of delusion, and multiply, enthusiastically, their effect through the literate discourse of democracy. As a domain of expectations, mirroring hope implicit in literacy, democracy conjures meaning only if it is paralleled by democratic participation in social and political experiences. When one of the two terms of this critical equation diminishes-as is the case with participation-democracy diminishes in the same proportion. There are many reasons for decreasing participation. In countries where effective democracy was replaced by democratic demagoguery, changes, such as those brought about by revolutions, revolts, and reforms, initially mobilize the people, almost to the last citizen. We are still observing a phenomenon symptomatic of democracy in East Europe and the republics of the former Soviet Union. From the almost unanimous enthusiasm over renewal, leading to formal conditions for democracy, individual participation in government is slowly diminishing. What are the causes of this phenomenon, which is paralleled by diminishing interest in religion, art, and solidarity?