Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!apple!limbo!taylor
From: philip@pescadero.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: The Computer and the Message
Message-ID: <1017@limbo.Intuitive.Com>
Date: 19 Jul 90 18:23:51 GMT
Sender: taylor@limbo.Intuitive.Com
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Lines: 14
Approved: taylor@Limbo.Intuitive.Com

Col. George L Sicherman commented earlier that:

> In the 16th century nobody ever spelled a word wrong.  Print created
> the demand for uniform spelling, by accelerating people's consumption
> of information.  Before silent reading, it didn't matter how you
> spelled a word, so long as it was intelligible to the reader...

In the 16th century, most people were illiterate. If you make a technology
more accessible, perhaps some "standard" will drop because it's no longer
only used by an elite. However, the overall "standard" of society may
potentially be improved. This was true of literacy; it will be interesting
to see the impact of computers in this area...

Philip Machanick