4 ms·

Kids need to learn to read. Society works sooo much better when you can assume every adult can read. Give man a fish vs. teach to fish..

• superuser2 11y ago
  This was true when print was orders of magnitude cheaper to distribute than audio or video. Of course text still has distinct advantages, particularly for further education (a lot easier to skim and pull the factoid you need out of a textbook than 80 hours of video), but "society" shouldn't be affected nearly as much as it used to be.
  • vlehto 11y ago
    ...and here I type you an answer. I can't really use video yet. Larger percentage of humans are literate than ever before. Larger body of knowledge is in written form than ever before. I think we are going to rely more on text in the future, not less. Even with video content, you search, tag and label them with text. That is not going away.
  • mrob 11y ago
    This isn't true yet, but with enough technological progress it could become true. And if it does, it seems likely that the change from literate to post-literate culture will be as significant as the change from pre-literate to literate. Ted Chiang wrote an excellent story examining this issue (although not going as far as completely post-literate): http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2013/the_truth_of_fact_the_truth_of_feeling_by_ted_chiang http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2013/the_truth_of...
• gaius 11y ago
  Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish... And he'll vote for the man who gave him a fish.