Fred Slocombe

Literacy Regaining Popularity

For decades we could only watch and listen. We sat and had nothing to say. Video games arrived and we could manipulate things that were created for us. The the personal computer arrived and we could create our own things, but share them with very few people.

Currently we can create and share ideas around the world as never before, and the fundamental necessity for such power is literacy. I never had an interest in reading until I knew I could write something that could be read by people around the world.

The generation born in the early 1980's will probably have the highest literacy rate because there has never before been such a high incentive as the opportunity for anyone to become potentially famous.

If we are systematically deprived of freely expressing ourselves, we may regress to stagnant illiteracy of the mid to late 1970's.