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From: marie@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Marie desJardins)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: illiterate society
Message-ID: <34666@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 2 Mar 90 20:03:23 GMT
References: <808@odin.cs.hw.ac.uk>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: marie@ernie.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Marie desJardins)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 57

In article <808@odin.cs.hw.ac.uk> raza@cs.hw.ac.uk (raz(a)) writes:
>Speech synthesis systems are already with us and speech recognition is
>improving all the time...  Compare this with the advent of the
>pocket calculator, this was heralded as the first step towards an 
>innumerate society.  What is the likelyhood of these developments 
>leading to a society that is illiterate ?

You raise an interesting question.  But I don't believe widespread
illiteracy will be a problem (at least not as a result of speech
synthesis) for several reasons:
    - Consider, as you mention, the invention of the pocket 
      calculator.  Yes, in a way, we have come to depend on
      the calculator to do even relatively simple calculations.
      On the other hand, the reliability is significantly higher
      than when all calculations had to be performed by hand,
      ease and speed of performing calculations has been greatly
      increased, and most importantly, most people can still add
      and subtract (notwithstanding McDonald's workers who can't
      make change until the computer tells them how much to return),
      although they probably can't rattle off multiplication tables
      as readily as schoolchildren could in the early 1900s.
      (Of course, I never did learn my multiplication tables,
      so I don't think this is a great loss. :-)
    - Consider also the invention of the printing press.  Prior
      to the widespread availability of printed texts, the oral
      tradition was much stronger than it is today.  Educated 
      people were expected to memorize literature, poetry,
      famous speeches, and so forth.  That skill was simply
      supplanted by other skills when it became superfluous.
      (Although I must admit I am still amazed by the idea
      that somebody could memorize the entire Iliad!)
    - Finally, I really can't imagine speech synthesis ever
      completely replacing the written word.  There are certain
      freedoms the written word provides that synthesized
      speech can't: you can quickly scan material, you can read
      at your own pace, pausing whenever you feel like it 
      without requesting that the system stop, and so forth.

Here's a question, then: can anybody else envision a communication
method that could completely eradicate the written word?  Even
a system that uses graphics and speech synthesis liberally
wouldn't (in my mind) have the ability to transmit information
simply and conveniently that written text have.  

Here's another question (although I'm getting away from the
results of AI technology, so I guess this is now officially
in the wrong group): how many people think that widespread
use of calculators has actually led to "innumeracy"?  [To
forestall responses of the McDonald's server sort as raised
above, I would argue that those people probably wouldn't
have had very good arithmetic skills anyway, and the real
effect of the computer-cash-register in that case is to
make it easier for people with poor arithmetic skills to
work in McDonald's.]

Marie desJardins
marie@ernie.berkey.edu