As a hybrid between art and science, engineering accepts the logic of scientific discovery only in order to balance it against the logic of aesthetic expectations. In the pragmatic framework of the civilization of illiteracy, engineering definitely has a dominant position in respect to the self-constitution of the human being in language- based practical experiences. This is due to the impact it has on the efficiency of human practical experiences and on their almost endless diversification.
There is a phase of conflict, a phase of accommodation, and a phase of complementarity when some means (such as language and the means for visualization used by designers and engineers) replace others, if they do not render them useless. In our time of experiences involving many more people than ever, of distributive transactions, of heterogeneity, and of interactions that go beyond the linearity of the sequence, the structural characteristics of literacy interfere with the new dynamics of human development as this is supported by very powerful technologies embodying a variety of logical possibilities. At this time, the implicit logic of literacy and the new logics (in the plural) collide in the pragmatic framework.
Within the logic of the literate discourse, followed volens nolens in this book, it should be clear that the attempt to salvage literacy is the attempt to maintain linear relations, determinism, hierarchy (of values), centralization-which fostered literacy-in a framework requiring non-linearity, decentralization, distributed modes of practical experiences, and unstable value (among others). The two frameworks are logically incompatible. This does not mean that literacy has to be discarded altogether, or that it will disappear, as cuneiform notation and pictographic writing did, or that it will be replaced by drawing or by computer-based language processing. The linear will definitely satisfy a vast number of practical activities; so will deterministic explanations and centralism (political, religious, technological, etc.), and even an elitist sense of value. But instead of being a universal standard, or even a goal (to linearize everything that is not linear, to ascertain sequences of cause and effect, to find a center and practice centrality), it will become part of a complex system of relations, free of hierarchy-or at least with fast changing hierarchies-valueless, adaptive, extremely distributed.
Of no less significance is the type of logic (and for that matter, rhetoric, heuristics, and dialectics) housed in language, i.e., projected from the universe of human self-constitution in the system of inferences, knowledge, and awareness of the being characteristic of literate frameworks of practical experiences. Language successfully captured a dualistic logic indebted to the values of truth and falsehood, and supported experiences embodied in the abstract character of logical rationality. It was complemented by logical symbolism and logical calculus, very successful in formalizing dualism, and in eliminating logical models not fitting the dualistic structure.
Literacy instilled bivalent logic as another of its invisible layers-something is written or not, the written is right or wrong-allowing only quite late, and actually in the realm of logical formalism, the appearance of multi-valued schemes. The non-linearity, vagueness, and fuzziness characteristic of the post-industrial pragmatic framework opened avenues of high human efficiency, better adapted to the scale of humankind that required efficiency and eventually made efficiency its major goal. Literacy is ill endowed for supporting multi-valued logic, although it was always tempted to step in its vast territories. Even some of the disciplines built around and in extension of literacy (such as history, philosophy, sociology) are not able to integrate a logic different from the one seated in the practical experience of reading and writing. This explains, for instance, computationalism as a new horizon for science, within which multi-valued logic can be simulated even if the computer's underlying structure is that of Boolean logic. The literate argument of science and multimedia's non-linear heuristic path to science are fundamentally different. Each requires a different logic and results in a different interaction between those who constitute their identity in the practical experience of scientific experiments and those who constitute their identity in co- participation.
It took longer in the world of predicative logic and in the science based on analytic power to accept fuzzy logic and to integrate it in new artifacts, than it took in the world of non-predicative logic and in the science based on the power of synthesis. Within the universe of non-predicative language, fuzzy logic made it into the design of control mechanisms for high-speed trains, as well as into new efficient toasters. It was accepted in Japan while it was still debated among experts in the Western world, until 1993, when a washing machine integrating fuzzy logic was introduced in the market. This fact can go on record as more than a mere example in a discussion regarding the implications of the global economy for the various language systems and the logical coordinating mechanisms specific to each.
Progress in understanding and emulating human thinking shows a progression from a literacy-based model to a model rooted in the new pragmatic framework. Rule- based, pattern-matching systems generalize predicate calculus; neural networking is devoted to mimicking the way minds work, in a synthetic neuron-plex array; fuzzy logic addresses the limitations of Boolean calculus and the nondeterminism of neural networks, and concentrates on modeling imprecision, ambiguity, and undecidability as these are embodied in new human practical experiences.
Sampling
Within the civilization of literacy, recollection and the logic attached to it are predominantly made through quoting. In the literate framework, to know something means to be able to write about it, thus reconfirming the logic of writing. Lives are subject to memories, and diaries are our interpreted life, written with some reader in mind: the beloved, one's children, a posterity willing to acknowledge or understand. The literate means of sharing in successive practical experiences contain the expected logic and affect both the experience and its communication. Everything seems to originate in the same context: to know means to re-live the experience. The literate gnoseology, with its implicit logic, is based on continuously remaking, reconstituting the experience as a language experience. This is why every form of writing based on the structure embodied in literacy-literary or philosophic, religious, scientific, journalistic, or political-is actually rewriting.
The civilization of illiteracy is one of sampling, a concept originating in genetics. To understand what this means, it is useful to contrast quotation and sampling. Literate appropriation in the form of quotation takes place in the structure of literacy. Sequences are designed to accept someone else's words. A quote introduces the hierarchy desired or acknowledged by invoking authority or questioning it. Authorship is exercised by producing a context for interpretation and maintaining literate rules for their expression. Interpretations are determined by the implicit expectation of reproducing the deterministic structure of literacy, i.e., its inner logic. The quote embodies centralism by establishing centers of interest and understanding around the quoted.