a little more McLuhan (& maybe Pynchon)

[David Morris]

The point David Payne makes is valid no matter what McLuhan might say.
 Literate versus Pre-literate is a gray scale.  And writing "symbols"
often start as picture symbols.

On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 7:08 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:>
>
> From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
> To: David Payne <dpayne1912 at hotmail.com>
> Cc: Pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 24, 2011 9:37 AM
> Subject: Re: a little more McLuhan (& maybe Pynchon)
>
>
> For McLuhan, who started this the answer is No...writing is phonetic abstraction, marks signifying the form of words.  Helen Keller famously learning
> the word for water might be a touchstone example.....
>
> He uses 'literacy' the old-fashioned way as well. He uses it the way the anthropolgists and sociologists did when they found and wrote of pre-literate peoples., people who did not read symbolic marks as words.....
>
>
>
> Right.  And are pictures writing?
>
> On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 11:43 PM, David Payne <dpayne1912 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> "literate" vs. "pre-literate" peoples is gray scale, not an "Us" vs. "Them".