Book power and the things that it makes possible

Assorted books on view from this "little free library" at street corner 

The city planners who build and repair water and sewer lines depend on reading and writing for their own design, record-keeping, and follow-up monitoring of projects. Likewise, the people who operate the heavy equipment rely on the written language, as do the creators of the tools and vehicles being used in this photo. All of this attention to written English starts with an ability to identify a relevant source book, open it and find the right page, then to read and retain what is there. This photo nicely juxtaposes books on the left and the infrastructure project on the right that printed words make possible.

The extended history of little sidewalk free books protected from the weather is probably chronicled on Wikipedia or another place online, but anecdotally in Michigan it was around 2014 that the first ones began to sprout here and there. It is impossible to know the change in book behavior as a result of free books positioned for "impulse reading" (unplanned, emotionally sparked appetite to hold and to own a book of one's own). Perhaps the total pages or number of titles being read across all demographic segments increased. Perhaps interest in print books, new or used, also increased.

In any case, although the relationship is not direct between the pages in this little library and the habits of reading and the day to day writing on-the-job by workmen, still the connection is there: once literacy is established, then a person can make use of it for personal or professional purposes. Perhaps there is an inverse expression of these outdoor book spots, a project not based on literacy but instead centered on orality; that is, appreciating and refining the spoken word. A few cities have experimented with "living books" in which volunteers show up for the appointed place and time to make themselves available to be "borrowed" and "opened up" by the library patrons. The volunteer invites listeners to hear the person's life story or episodes to pass down to the next generation.

This photo is a reminder of the importance of reading and the printed word, even in a time of online videos and text messages, where attention spans are limited to a screenful or two of letters and numbers. Without a system of written notation to capture knowledge and then distill wisdom, the oral-only life of many people would be much narrower than it is today, thanks to books and the ability to read and write them.

The experience of seeing unfamiliar writing or code

Suppose this were another form of writing seen only on frosty days.

Full disclosure: the photo is morning frost on a car hood. It is not a newly discovered rune or other form of written notation.

Imagination is a powerful thing, sometimes leading down the corridors of fear and paranoia, or the opposite direction to a place of confidence and sense of connectedness to all other sentient beings large or small. Taking this photo as a writing prompt: imagine that this pattern of sometimes perpendicular, sometimes linear, and sometimes angled lines represented music or computer code or, indeed, spoken language. What, then, is the experience of seeing unfamiliar writing?

Several responses come to mind to begin with: (a) this contains secret meaning and possibly is a sign of communication powers that exceed our own system, (b) what is it about; and might it be a threat or a benefit affecting me directly or in a more indirect way, (c) maybe it describes subjects that we in our own writing and thinking so far have not touched, (d) aesthetically, is this instance typical, low-brow or high-brow in learnedness, beauteous or instead inelegant, (e) with regard to the experience of reading this message, what does it "sound" like.

Taking the experience of reading a paragraph or entire short story in English, a beginning reader moves from syllable to syllable or from word to word. An intermediate reader jumps from phrase to phrase, from predicate to predicate. The most practiced reader operates at the level of whole ideas or threads of discussion, barely noticing words or even paragraphs as the entirety plays out in the mind's eye. In the same way for this "text" in the photograph, if one were an advanced reader of this language painted in the cold dark night to be revealed briefly before the morning sun makes it invisible again, then what would the message tell the reader?

Something less than 7,000 human languages exist now, down from a much, much larger number before the time of industrialization, mass-migrations and extraction of natural resources from land and sea. Every 2 weeks another language goes extinct when the last speaker has no one to listen, according to K. David Harrison, When Languages Die. Only about 120 of the languages have a writing system; all the others use the spoken and chanted and shouted and sung word to communicate across the generations. So the imaginary experiences sketched above as "the experience of seeing unfamiliar writing or code" probably happens here and there when people accustomed to life without writing do finally encounter a piece of text that is written by hand or has been printed.

Expanding on this linkage of abstract marks that can be interpreted to entire worlds of meaning, perhaps the day will come with the aid of AI and fast PC processors that we can "read" the chorus of birdsong, the melodies of whales and the other sea mammals, or even "listen to" the trees and fungi in their yammering and soughing.