The False Dawn of the Post-Literate Society

When writers mention “writing” or “literacy” these days, they tend to do it as part of an obituary. Man’s ability to read and write was born in the Mesopotamian city of Uruk, when the ancient Sumerians used clay tablets to record the story of Gilgamesh, He Who Saw the Deep, slayer of the fearsome Humbaba. Over the course of its long and productive life, human literacy gave us the Odyssey, the Mahabharata, Hamlet, Middlemarch — not to mention all those lovely prize-shortlisted novels that sit on our bookshelves waiting for us to get round to them. Then, in the first quarter of the 21st century, it underwent a precipitous decline: children started using iPads in restaurants, bookstores stocked nothing but hastily written multi-book series about elves bonking goblins, and everyone got really into podcasts. Before long, the only thing left for the few remaining literate people to do was shuffle around like members of a dying priestly order, holding candlelit vigils, muttering commemorative chants, as the rest of the world sank into a period of barbaric “secondary orality”. Literacy: 3000 BC – 2026 AD. Requiescat.