Evolution of Conciousness (Blog Assignment 3)

Happy Thursday!

Out of the examples from Carmody's article, the one that I feel most exemplifies that "writing restructures consciousness" is that of the industrial revolution. Before the industrial revolution, the invention of the printing press could have arguably had the same function that I am going to argue. Before even the printing press, having a book was something only for the extremely wealthy. Only those who had money could afford to be educated enough to read, so it limited the people who were able to read that text had to have the money to have a manuscript commissioned. The way that the printing press helped to spread books, even though they were still expensive, is similar to the way that the Greeks' written language of an alphabet with vowels propelled them to the top of the other ancient cultures. They were able to communicate in a new and more advanced way in comparison to the other cultures.

The printing press was an excellent invention for the spread of knowledge, and it may have minorly restructured consciousness, but it was only a step in the way that the industrial revolution achieved this. While the printing press could spread literacy to a larger audience than before its invention, the industrial revolution allowed a large majority of the world to be literate. The world today would not think in nearly the same way as if we were not literate. Without the industrial revolution's affect on widespread literacy, there would not be the digital literacy we have in this day and age, similar to the fact that without the printing press the industrial revolution would have not been as effective. It is a necessary chain of events.

As discussed in the previous reading, thinking without knowledge of literacy is completely different thinking. Being literate changed the way humans think, often visualizing words for objects. The industrial revolution was one of the tools that spread on a large scale the new type of consciousness that comes with literacy. We think based on what we read, we expand our vocabulary through reading, we express our thoughts and ideas through writing. The fact that we are literate is a defining concept in our culture for how we live our daily lives. I would call this consciousness.

~Meg~

“Change your language and you change your thoughts.” ~ Karl Albrecht