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Post Literate Era

steve_bank

Diabetic retinopathy and poor eyesight. Typos ...
Joined
Nov 9, 2017
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seattle
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secular-skeptic
I listened to several reports on the post literacy era. TYounger people are not readng in depth. Short fictions. Lie racy meaning the ability to read and write is at an all time global high, but the ability to read and reason in depth is going down.

Functional literacy is the ability to use reading, writing, math, and critical thinking skills to handle daily tasks and function well in society.

Higher reduction has become job training.

AI Overview
No, the physical ability to read and write is not over, but society is entering a "post-literate" era where text is no longer the main way people get information or entertainment.

The Global Reality of LiteracyAll-time high: About 87% to 88% of adults worldwide can read and write today, compared to just 10% in 1820.

Basic skills remain: Billions of people use reading every day for work, messaging, and basic tasks.

Why People Say the "Age of Reading" is Ending Recent cultural discussions—highlighted by a prominent essay in The Atlantic—argue that deep reading and reading for pleasure are fading.Less book reading: Over half of American adults report reading zero books in a year, and daily reading for pleasure has dropped sharply over the last two decades.

Shift to video and audio: Major media platforms and everyday habits have shifted heavily toward video, short clips, and audio rather than long articles or books.

Decline in humanities: College degrees in fields like English and history have dropped significantly.

SummaryPeople still know how to read, but text is losing its central place in human culture. You can check global definitions and tracking data through the UNESCO Literacy Overview.
 
Pre-digital and digital generations simply process information differently. Older generations may spend the weekend reading long fiction or nonfiction whereas younger generations would be scanning, sorting, and compiling large amounts of information. They were born into a world where all the world's information is at their fingertips, so scanning became their norm. We had the newspaper, a book we were currently reading, and maybe a magazine in the shitter.

What about digital illiteracy? Older generations falling victim to misinformation online that younger generations would roll their eyes at. "Grandma, don't open that email if you don't know who it's from." Nope. Grandma's gonna open it anyway. She just can't help herself. And then who has to spend their evening unfucking grandma's 15 year old Dell computer?

What younger generations are at risk at is relying on search and AI to do their thinking for them. They are shortcutting and shortchanging themselves. Whereas older generations are more susceptible to believing something just because they've heard it over and over again because they did not grow up with the ability to verify the claim right then and there.

If there is a failure, it's in education not seeing these changes and adapting to the student's learning style. In this, the student did not fail. The system failed the student. You can't take someone under 25 and drop 1280 pages of Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in their lap and expect them to read it.
 
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