Understanding Growing up literate

Abstract

For the first time in a long period of history, we live on the cusp of a profound re-ordering of the historic relations between speech and writing. Speech has often been regarded as ephemeral and uncapturable and therefore fleeting or insignificant in human experience, while writing has been seen as durable and anchoring humans to memory, experience and deep knowledge. Much of our growth as civilised communities has relied on the authority of the written word. Yet today, through history-making transformations in communications technology, from audio recording to instantaneous translations, we see a growing reliance on speech, voice recognition and retrieval of information.