ABSTRACT

Our Workshop topic is “literacy,” a topic much richer than it used to be. It includes not only reading and writing as processes, but how individual minds and collective cultures are affected once these processes take hold. And even beyond that, we now properly inquire how mind and culture are altered by the availability of written texts and even try to plumb the mystery of what it took, what prerequisites were needed, as it were, for literate systems to have arisen and flourished – what functions they served beyond what oral communication provided. It has become an almost limitless topic, thanks in no small measure to David Olson’s prodding us all awake.