Download - Российский комитет Программы ЮНЕСКО ...

To accommodate orature in cyberspace we need to consciously and deliberately
reassess the role of multimedia as a means of information and knowledge
sharing. Multimedia allows for the documentation of human thought, ideas and
knowledge without literacy. It does not necessarily require the development
of a system of orthography and therefore does not present the steep learning
curve that literacy presents to adult illiterates. Modern digital technology has
facilitated multimedia in unprecedented ways. By virtue of this development,
it is now possible to document information in different forms and in various
modes, be it in the form of sounds in speech and music or in the form of images
in writing, still images and motion picture. Information in various forms and
modes can now be stored and retrieved uniformly in various media on the same
hardware. This diversified access to information through multimedia should
be better exploited to include cultures that are still based primarily on orality
in cyberspace. So far, multimedia has been used primarily as enhancement to
written texts in cyberspace. Even though such use is welcomed, multimedia
needs to be seen as valid and productive in its own right and should therefore
not be used merely to enhance written texts.
Literacy is defined as the ability to read and write. It must be noted, however,
that the value of literacy is not really in the process of reading and writing but
in the results we get from reading and writing; the sharing of information and
knowledge. Hence, literacy is valuable only because it provides an efficient
means for the documentation and reproduction of human thoughts, ideas and
knowledge. If it is possible to achieve the same results without reading and
writing, the value of the process of reading and writing becomes diminished
and the result of reading and writing takes the full value. Multimedia offers
the capacity to document human thought, ideas and knowledge beyond
reading and writing and therefore offers the possibility of redefining literacy,
changing it from ‘the ability to read and write’ to ‘the capacity to engage
literature’. Replacing the notion of ability with that of capacity moves the
definition of literacy away from excluding those that are not able to including
those that can be capacitated.
The fight against illiteracy is a major preoccupation the world over, but as was
observed earlier, death of illiterates still seems to be one of the most effective
tools used in this fight. This is not to say that illiterates are deliberately killed
in the fight, but the intrinsic link between illiteracy and ignorance weakens
the chances of survival of an illiterate person, manifesting as a vicious cycle
in which illiteracy breeds poverty and poverty weakens a person’s capacity
to become literate.
Modern digital information communication technology can be used to
break this vicious cycle by introducing multimedia as a means of productive
139