In “Orality and Literacy”, Walter Ong describes the importance of writing as the single most important technological invention in that it transformed human consciousness. Pictographs, exacerbated by Alphabet style writing, dissolved boundaries between real and virtual. Ong asserted that the essential function of writing (Greek system) is to represent sound as a thing. I imagine that this must have worked as a sort of biofeedback. I also imagine that the increasing ability to parse video and imagery will work in a similar way; especially when we are able to touch imagined space. The essential method of parsing imagery is to take a physical space and reduce it to its smallest common denominator (the pixel). This abstraction (or conceptualization) of space will further drive our inner lives. At some point, it will conflate the boundaries between real and virtual in ways that are unexpected and surreal. Ideas may become concrete, physical objects. This is already happening to some extent with Augmented Reality, 3D scanning, and 3D printing. We, at least artificially, are able to tag objects with information about themselves. I imagine that as we better understand this new spatial language, inert materials may develop a sense of intelligence or self-awareness.
Literacy takes time and continued engagement – a kind of training if you will. It also assumes a certain aptitude. Im interested in the potential of spatial literacy to educate individuals with “learning disorders” (dyslexia, adhd, etc). Given the collapse between real and virtual, spatial literacy, I hope will make for better tools and more opportunity for kinesthetic and visual learners. Maybe spatial literacy will radically reinterpret those with “learning disorders” as the avant garde of new structures of consciousness? Or maybe it will at least give me a new methodology for hacking code….