Quote:
Originally Posted by teh603
Although with things going the way they are, I wouldn't be surprised if literacy was to become a massive stigma in a few years, with a large vocal class of "won't read" people actively destroying what writings they can. Its already happened once or twice in human history.
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If I read that premise on the back-flap of a book, I would immediately put the book down as being unbelievable. The human race is digitizing thousands of books a month, and the pace is accelerating at an exponential rate; at the same time, the cost of digital storage is generally dropping and will continue to drop. Right now, anyone in an affluent country could store the sum total of digital literature on a device that would fit in a shoebox, and could easily share the same; in the future, your cellphone could easily store a large percentage of all of the books produced. Given that, I don't see traditional book burning as particularly effective or likely.
Also, I can't see a stigma being attached to literacy when the 95-100% are literate in North America.