In the short term, I'm sure UX designers could provide cross-cultural hieroglyphs. That's basically what they do already. Pre-literate toddlers use iPads. Phone

In the short term, I'm sure UX designers could provide cross-cultural hieroglyphs. That's basically what they do already. Pre-literate toddlers use iPads. Phones also do have speakers and pretty good text-to-speech. Tap cow icon. ... Robot lady: "The cow says: MOOO". In the medium to long term, this would only make education more important, especially for women and girls. Maybe the FedApp could incorporate something like DuoLingo, again incentivized with Fedbucks. People have a way of learning quickly, when they have an incentive. This would all be a lot more defensible than the Xinjiang method. It's like this: When the Ottoman sultan wanted to neutralize a nephew, he wouldn't throw him in prison; he'd put him in the harem. Instead of a vast open-air prison, this would be a vast open-air harem. (Or work camp? Unclear which.) ... It is interesting though, this idea that illiteracy can actually be a defense against state coercion/seduction. It's like playing the Chicken game with no brakes: "You have to let me win, because I can't stop."