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Interview in Ajoblanco. Translation from the Spanish >> PDF.
The new society arising from the digital model has transcended the need for literacy as we know it from the past. As paradoxical as it might seem, a world based on communication and knowledge is making headway without a literate structure.
Mihai Nadin, born and educated in Romania, lives and works in Germany and the USA. He wears a beret that he bought in Barcelona. A Jew who lost 90% of his family during the Holocaust, he is optimistic about the digital revolution and its potential for putting an end to criminal activity (drug and arms dealing, illegal immigration, exploitation of women and children, etc.) because the new media demand transparency.
A few months ago, I came across one of his books, The Civilization of Illiteracy, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is an extraordinary book! In order to learn about his ideas and intellectual adventures, I visited him at his home in Little Compton, Rhode Island.
"What interests me is how we disconnect ourselves from things that pertain to the past in order to make possible a totally different human experience," he told me. "We have progressed from a civilization in which we have almost used up the earth's natural resources and are left with the resources of our minds. The computer is the most appropriate medium for making these resources available around the world and to everyone. But not at its current stage, which is actually very primitive."
AB: What did you learn in Romania?
MN: My interest in computers began in a country that didn't have any. I wrote my first programs before I even had a computer. This was a great opportunity, nevertheless, because when you program directly on a computer, you limit your mind since it remains captive to the machine. When I sat in front of a computer for the first time [in Germany, 1965], I didn't want to touch it. I began to write programs for creating visual and musical representations. The people around me asked, "What are you doing? We use only digits."
AB: What did contact with West German culture mean to you?
MN: I became acquainted with a society that was practically decadent through all its opulence, a society in which you can lose your ability to think critically. As an exporting country, West Germany depends on the rest of the world. Today it promotes the European Community because that is the only way it can maintain its own high standard of living. To Germans, a good person is one who thinks and acts just like they do. When they go to Mallorca, they turn it into a German island. The moment of truth will come when Germany realizes that other Europeans are different, that these differences deserve respect, and that they can learn from these differences.
AB: What about the USA?
MN: If Romania freed me from the computer, the USA liberated me from structure. While Eminent Scholar at the Ohio State University, I discovered what it means to live in a cultural desert. In the USA, universities – ; especially the state universities – ; are like canning factories. Students enter as empty containers, are filled, and are shipped out into the world.
AB: What was the genesis of your book, The Civilization of Illiteracy?
MN: A very trivial observation. When I gave my first class in an American university, I wrote the name of one of the country's most famous and best poets on the blackboard. Nobody recognized the name. As a European, I assumed that my students belonged to the civilization of reading and writing, of literacy. But they did not. I was always told that if you are highly cultured, highly literate, you will be very productive. In the USA, it's not like that; it's almost the opposite. The less your literate culture gets in the way, the better. That evening, I arrived home with tears in my eyes. My book began with the discovery that the values associated with the culture of literacy, which I hold in such high esteem, were no longer valid. Even the professors no longer read books. I remember commenting to a friend, during a conference we both attended in Sicily, that we should visit Pisa before we fly back home. The next day, he asked me to find the place for him on the map because he could not. He was looking for pizza!
AB: Why do you think this is happening?
MN: From the beginning of its history, the USA not only liberated itself from the politics of the civilization of literacy and its negative characteristics, but also from its culture and norms. Now, Europe runs a certain risk that the new models developed in the USA will take over. As things are currently developing, both cultures are on a collision course. For example, the cityscape of skyscrapers on the hoizon is the antithesis of what cities used to be: markets of all kinds of small merchants, usually near a river. Today the river no longer serves any function because it is rarely used for transporting merchandise. Those skyscrapers are telling us who exercises power when institutions are no longer financed by bills with very literate slogans, but by bits that travel through cyberspace at speeds for which literate culture is not appropriate. When money is moved from one location on the network to another, it makes no difference to the customer which bank is moving it.
AB: What is the cause of this collision?
MN: Europe has started to decline, but not because it is being Americanized. In order to be economically competitive, Europeans must give up the structures of the civilization of literacy. But this entails giving up a great part of their identity, of what makes European cultures what they are. If you visit the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, no one who knows anything about Basque culture will claim that it is a museum that displays the culture of Bilbao. This is one of the victories of the civilization of illiteracy: the area becomes open to global culture, but at the same time culture is negated as great numbers of tourists are processed at airports like data is processed on the information highway. And more serious collisions are on the way.
AB: What do you mean?
MN: Take a look at Greece. The citizen of contemporary Greece holds none of the values associated with classic Greece. In today's Europe, the structure is slowly being liberalized, because economic concerns demand this, but liberal does not necessarily mean democratic in the classic sense. The concept of commercial democracy has captivated Europe to the extent that the continent has become one great bazar.
AB: Would you say, then, that the citizens of the USA have a stronger identity because they were born into the civilization of illiteracy?
MN: That's right. And I just experienced this in one of my classes at Stanford University, in California's Silicon Valley. I saw how the identity of my students manifests itself through values of people who have no sense of permanency, of people who have lived through a time of fast change. They live in the present, as transitory as it is. They don't ask about what went on in the last five minutes, or what will happen in the future. I asked them if there will be people living after we die. There answer was that they did not know. A very honest answer. But its reveals that they probably did not even think about the issue. They live an identity that practically celebrates having no other dimension than their own present. In Germany, on the contrary, my students are always agonizing over what used to be, what is, and what could be in the future. In Europe there is an identity of agony.
We are going through a great bifurcation, departing from what we know, from what belongs to the civilization of literacy, and branching off into something that is still in development, something that is still not well defined but which presents humankind with a great number of possible means for development. In mathematics, such a zone, before a bifurcation, is known as an area of acceleration and extreme instability. We are going though exactly such a moment of acceleration.
AB: When did it begin?
MN: About 50 or 60 years ago. World War II was the last war of the civilization of literacy. Its manuevers on the field of battle and its strategies were based on the literate model of waging war. War was a text, with its rules of hierarchy and centralization of authority, sequentiality and linearity of execution, among other characteristics of the text. But with the atomic bomb, we go beyond the literate scenario. You do not bomb a city, you devastate it and everything around it.
AB: Where are we now?
MN: I always tell my students that they will know when we are beyond the primitive stages of the digital era when they no longer see computers. The same thing will happen as did with electricity. I don't have an electric generator at home. I use the electric energy that I need, and which is delivered to my home through its own infrastructure. We are in a period of new ways of communicating among ourselves, of relating to each other. When the postal system became available to the public, letters took a long time in reaching their destination. Then the telephone was invented and with it came the possibility to reach another party at the speed of sound. Electronic mail travels at the speed of light. But its most important characteristic is not its speed, but the fact that we can begin to think together, at the same time, in parallel; not only your intelligence and mine, but together with many other individuals. For example, all the students in Barcelona can interact with all the students in Ohio. This is what really gets me excited!
AB: Wasn't the acquisition of language a fundamental turning point in the history of humankind?
MN: It was extremely important, but language acquisition and development displayed elements of biological continuity. The current development transcends biology by means of what is known as artificial life and the creation of artificial languages. Today we can create an artificial environment from which a language will emerge.
AB: Does the civilization of illiteracy imply the need to reject God and religion?
MN:?No, this need will not end, but it will take on different aspects. What is called New Age belongs to the civilization of illiteracy through its characteristic of sampling – ; taking bits from here and there from what already exists and synthesizing them in new ways. Individuals constitute themselves as religious in a number of ways, ways that escape the literate model precisely because it is up to the individual, not to a church or religious organization that can impose its will. The current Minister of Foreign Affairs in Germany, Joschka Fischer, is a good example of self-constitution in a realm outside religion. As a member of the Green party, he transcended the world dominated by literacy and constituted himself as an alternative to it. Today, he has returned to the literate model of politics. On the other hand, there are others who opt for a society that is not homogeneous and authoritarian, like the members of various ecologically minded organizations.
AB: Will ecology play an important role in the future of the planet?
MN: I wouldn't put it like that, because then we'd be putting ourselves in the civilization of literacy. We live locally and we will save locally. Today's great prophets want to save the planet on a global scale, but it won't work, because the answer is always local. You may say that smoke produced in Ohio does not remain local, but travels to places far away. But the answer to controlling that type of pollution rests with the local population where the pollution originates.
AB: What role do politicians play in contemporary society?
MN: They are mere loudspeakers for the civilization that is on the way out because they embody inefficiency and accept hierarchical modes of procedure. In the civilization of illiteracy, hierarchy is meaningless. Even today, the role of president in the USA is merely symbolic.
AB: What type of politics would you choose?
MN: I believe in self-government on community levels that are more and more local. You and I could decide to belong to a virtual community that corresponds to our personal expectations and requirements for effectiveness, and for a short time or a longer time. I have no problem in attaching myself to an anarchistic utopia because it anticipated the future. True liberty cannot be taught in books, it can only be practiced.
The Digital Age: No books, no children, no literacy, no computers. . . .
In The Civilization of Illiteracy, Nadin describes a fundamental transition that shakes the foundations of the world as we have known it. If the Industrial , the apogee of the civilization of literacy, was the culmination of the neolithic period, since it implied tools that were the extension of the body, the digital revolution that we are going through implies the extension of the mind. Until now, humankind's most important revolution was the acquisition of language, especially written language, which was placed on a par with God. Language gave rise to important human societies and enabled these to transmit their experience. Efficient means of production led to surplus and commerce, to centralized modes of living in cities with leaders who protected them and the people in them. Commerce led to recordkeeping and notation, and thus began the civilization of literacy, as manifested through the Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans, the centers of power rising from the ruins of the Roman Empire, the Islamic movement. The Renaissance reinstated the world of commerce and arts that culminated in the Industrial Revolution and the World Wars deriving from it.
Through the tool of literacy, the old world gave us philosophy, religion, and human rights. The civilization of literacy represented a progression, which today is being overturned by new realities, and has as its characteristics centrality, hierarchy, sequentiality, and linearity, among others. According to Nadin, the technological revolution implies new languages that are more precise than natural language and mediations that are much more rapid than natural language can provide for. These arise from the human requirement of efficiency in practical activity, especially in scientific and technological development and in science. Literate language is too slow and ambiguous for the cognitive aspects required in present and future activity.
The digital revolution implies, in addition, a new form of energy that does not rely on coal or oil, but on the mind. It entails new forms of human relations that will change traditional human institutions. The traditional family, for example, was a product of the civilization of literacy, displaying the characteristics of hierarchy, centrality, linear progression, etc. Children were economically necessary for agriculture and industry and for the survival of the clan and the human species. Today, they are not necessary for any of these purposes. Another aspect of the civilization of illiteracy is that the library and the book – the latter being an example par excellence of linearity – will disappear in their current forms. We are experiencing a transition towards a civilization whose characteristics are non-hierarchy, distributed and parallel processing, high degrees of mediation, and multiple lanuages in which no one in particular dominates. It is at the same time a civilization of liberty.
LA NUEVA SOCIEDAD SURGIDA DE LA INFORMÁTICA HA SUPERADO LA NECESIDAD DE ALFABElIZACI6N.
Paradójicamente, un mundo basado en Ia comunicación y el conocimiento va a empezar su andadura sin Ia cultura escrita.
Mihai Nadin nos descubre en esta entrevista las leyes no escritas del nuevo mundo. Las normas que regirán Ia era digital.
Text y fotos: Mercedes Vilanova
Mihai Nadin es un rumano exiliado que vive a cabllo entre Alamania y Estados Unidos. Va siempre con boina, una boina que se compra en Barcelona, donde visita a uno de SUS amigos catalanes, el profesor Frederic Chorda. Este judio que perdio al 90% de su familia en el Holocausto es un optimista empedernido que cree que la revolución digital acabara con la economia criminal (droga, armas, inmigracion, mujeres y niños) porque los media electrónicos exigen trasparencia.
Profesor eminente de las más selectas universidades estadounidenses, es partidario del anarquismo como utopia que ha predicho nuestro mejor futuro. Hace meses encontre uno de sus textos en Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Civilization of Illiterac,v es un libro extraordinario. Para hablar de sus ideas y su aventura intelectual 10 he visitado en su casa de Little. Compton. en el estado de Rhode Island. "Lo que me interesa es saber cómo desinventamos cosas que pertenecen al pasado para hacer posible una experiencia humana totalmente diferente", me cuenta. "Hemos pasado de una civilizacion en la que hemos usado y casi agotado los recursos de la naturaleza a otra en la que solo nos queda el recurso de la mente. Y para hacerla asequible, el medio es el ordenador. Aunque no en su forma actual, que es aún muy primitiva".
Qué aprendib en Rumania?
-Me interesé por los ordenadores en un pais que no los tenia. Escribi mis primeros programas sin haber tenido nunca uno. Fue una gran oportunidad, porque cuando programas frente al ordenador estás limitando tu mente, que queda prisionera de la máquina. Cuando en Alemania me senté por primera vez frente a un ordenador, no queria tocarlo. Empecé a procesar programas que eran representaciones visuales 0 musicales. Las personas que me rodeaban me decian: "?Que estás haciendo? Nosotros únicamente empleamos cifras".
Que significh para usted el contacto con Ia cultura alemana occidental?
-Conoci una sociedad casi decadente en su opulencia y en la que es fácil perder la capacidad del pensar critico. Dependen de la explotacion del resto del mundo y quieren pertenecer a la Union Europea porque es la única forma de mantener su estandar de vida; por eso la financian. Pero cuando van a Mallorca aspiran a convertirla en una isla alemana. Un buen extranjero, según ellos, es el que actúa y piensa çomo un alemán. El momento de la verdad les llegara cuando se den cuenta de que los europeos son diferentes.
Y Estados Unidos?
-Si en Rumania me libere del ordenador, los Estados Unidos me permitieron liberarme de la estructura. Como eminent scholur de la Universidad de Ohio descubri 10 que es vivir en un desierto intelectual. En ese pais la uni-versidad es una máquina para procesar cabezas; los estudiantes entran y salen como si fueran coches.
Cuál fue Ia génesis de su libro The Civilization of Illiteracy?
-Una observación muy trivial. Cuando di mi prirmera clase en una universidad estadounidense escribi el nombre de uno de sus mejores poetas en la pizarra y nadie sabia quien era. Como europeo, habia asumido que mis estudiantes pertenecian a la civilizacion de la escritura, pero no era asi. Siempre me habian dicho que si estaba altamente alfabetizado seria muy productivo, pero en Estados Unidos ocurria exactamente Io contrario. Aquella tarde llegué a casa con lagrimas en los ojos. Mi libro empezo con aquel descubrimiento de que los valores asociados a la civilizacion de la escritura, que yo tenia en tanta estima, no eran válidos. Los profesores ya no leian libros. Recuerdo que le comenté a un colega que queria visitar la ciudad italiana de Pisa. Al dia siguiente me pidió que se la localizara en el mapa porque no sabia encontrarla. Buscaba Pizza.
- Porqué cree que sucede esto?
-Desde el principio de su historia, los Estados Unidos se han estado liberando no solo politicamente, sino también de las normas de Ia civilizacion de la escritura. Y en estos momentos corremos el riesgo de que nos traigan sus nuevas estructuras a Europa, porque ambas civilizaciones están colisionando muy fuertemente. Por ejemplo, el perfil de rascacielos que enmarca el horizonte es la negación de 10 que las ciudades solian ser antes: mercados para la actividad de pequeños comerciantes junto a un rio. Hoy el rio no cumple ninguna funcion porque ya no transporta nada. Lo que esos rascacielos nos estan diciendo es quién tiene el poder cuando las instituciones ya no se tinancian con la muy alfabetizada moneda escrita, sino con los bits que se envian por el ciberespacio. Cuando el dinero se mueve a través de los nudos de la red informatica ya no importa cuál es el banco que los pone en circulacion.
Por quk esa colision?
-Porque Europa ha decaido. No es que se haya americanizado; ésa es la manera grosera de describirlo. Para competir, los europeos tienen que renunciar a las estructuras de la civilizacion de la escritura, pero al hacerlo renuncian a su identidad. Vas a Bilbao y visitas el Guggenheim: nadie que sepa algo de la cultura vasca te dirá que ese museo es bilbaino. Ésa es la Victoria de la civilizacion sin textos: se conduce a las grandes masas de turistas por los aeropuertos como los datos a través de las autopistas informaticás. Pero las colisiones más profundas aùn están por llegar.
LA qué se refiere?
-Fijese en Grecia: el ciudadano de hoy no posée ninguno de los valores de Ia Grecia clasica. Éste es el destino inmediato de Europa: las estructuras se están volviendo más liberales, pero liberal no quiere decir demócrata. La concepcion de la democracia comercial ha cautivado a Europa hasta el punto de que la ha convertido en un gran bazar.
Diria, pues, que los ciudadanos estadounidenses tienen una identidad fuerte porque han en la sin escritura?
-Eso es 10 que afkmo. Y 10 acabo de vivir este verano en mis clases en la Universidad de Stanford, en el Sillicon Valley de California. He comprobado cómo la identidad de mis estudiantes se manifiesta en unos valores para los que no tiene sentido la permanencia. Viven la transitoriedad del presente; no se cuestionan sobre l o que ha pasado hace cinco minutos, ni sobre el inmediato despues. Les pregunto "?Habrá alguien despues de nosotros?", y su respuesta es: "No 10 se". Tienen una identidad que está casi celebrando el no tener más dimension que la del propio presente. Por el contrario, en Alemania, entre mis estudiantes siempre se da la agonia entre 10 que solia ser, 10 que es hoy y 10 que podria ser. En Europa ves una identidad agonica. Ahora estamos atravesando una gran bifurcacion entre 10 que conocemos, que pertenece a la civilizacion de la escritura, y algo que se está desarrollando, que no está muy bien definido y que significa una cantidad enorme de posibilidades. En matematicas se habla de áreas de aceleracion e inestabilidad extremas. Y precisamente estamos viviendo uno de esos momentos acelerados.
Cuando empezo?
-Hace unos cincuenta o sesenta arios. La Segunda Guerra Mundia1 fue la Ultima guerra alfabetizada. Por los movimientos en el camno bélico. nor su estrateeia. Todo estaba inspirado en el modelo alfabetizado. La guerra era un texto. Pero con la bomba atómica se escapa del escenario escrito: no bombardeas una ciudad; la arrasas, la borras.
Y en qué punto estamos?
-Siempre les digo a mis estudiantes que sabrán cuándo ha concluido esta etapa primitiva actual de la era digital el dia que no vean ningún ordenador a su alrededor. Pasará exactamente como con la electricidad: yo no tengo un generador de electricidad en mi casa; sólo utilizo la energia electrica que preciso.
Hay nuevas formas de relacionarse: antes las cartas tardaban dias en llegar; despues el teléfono transporto la voz a la velocidad del sonido. El correo electronico 10 hace a la de la luz. Pero su caracteristica decisiva no es esa velocidad, sino que podemos empezar a pensar juntos al mismo tiempo, no solo su inteligencia y la mia sino juntamente con muchasmás, como por ejemplo los estudiantes de Barcelona y los de Ohio. Esto realmente me apasiona.
No fue la adquisición del lenguaje el cambio fundamental de Ia especie humana?
-Fue importantisima, pero la adquisicion del lenguaje tuvo elementos de continuidad biologica. El cambio actual trasciende 10 biológico a través de la vida artificial y por la creacion de lenguajes artiticiales. Incluso hoy podriamos crear un ambiente artificial del que surgiera un lenguaje.
La civilización sin textos implica la necesidad de acabar con Dios?
-No, esa necesidad no acaba, pero hoy es totalmente diferente. La new age ya pertenece a la civilizacion sin textos. El actual ministro de Asuntos Exteriores de Alemania, el ecopacifista Joschka Fischer, es un buen ejemplo de una persona que se escapó del mundo dominante de los textos, ingreso en un mundo alternativo y hoy ha vuelto a la estructura politica alfabetizada. En cambio, hay personas que permanecen en la sociedad no estructurada, como el movimiento verde.La ecologia tendra un paple muy importante en el futuro.
El futuro del planeta?
-No 10 llamaria asi, porque en este caso volveriamos a tener una civilizacion de la escritura. Vivimos localmente y salvamos localmente. Los grandes profetas que hoy quieren salvar globalmente el planeta no encontraran respuesta, porque ésta es siempre local.
Qué representan los politicos en la sociedad actual?
-Son meros portavoces de la civilizacion del pasado porque representan la ineficacia y aceptan la jerarquia. En la civilizacion sin textos, la jerarquia no significa nada. La figura del presidente de Estados Unidos pasará a ser puramente simbolica.
Que tipo de politica elegiria?
-Soy partidario del autogobierno en comunidades cada vez más locales. Usted y yo podemos decidir pertenecer a una misma comunidad virtual según nuestras expectativas personales y por eficacia, por un tiempo corto 0 largo. No tengo ningún problema en adherirme a la utopia anarquista porque anticipó el futuro. Pero sé que la libertad no puede ensenarse.
SIN LIBROS, SIN HIJOS, SIN ALFABETO, SIN ORDENADORES...
En nie Civiliza tion of Illiteracy, Nadin describe el cambio de escala fundamental que está empezando a sufrir nuestra experiencia del mundo. Si Ia revolución industrial fue Ia culminacion del Neolitico, puesto que implicó la extensión del brazo o la culminacion de las posibilidades de la civilizacion de la escritura, la revolución digital, en la que ahora nos estamos embarcando, implica la extensión de la mente. Hasta ahora, la revolución más importante de la especie habia sido la adquisicion del lenguaje, hasta el punto que hicimos de la palabra Dios. El lenguaje dio origen a mayores grupos humanos (las tribus) y a la cultura, que exigia una transmisión compleja de la experiencia. Una agricultura que crea el excedente y permite que surjan las primeras ciudades. Con el comercio aparece la numeracion y comienza la escritura, cuyas grandes manifestaciones fueron Ia Grecia clásica, los estados centralizados con con su Ilustracion y la revolución industrial, que culmina con la Segunda Guerra Mundialy el cine. Esa vieja civilizacion, que hizo de la escritura su columna vertebral, nos dio la filosofia, la religión y el derecho; era un corsé que hoy se está haciendo jirones y que se caracterizaba por su linealidad, secuencialidad y centralidad. La actual revolución digital implica, según Nadin, nuevos lenguajes mucho más precisos y mediaciones mucho más rápidas, necesarias por la exigencia de eficacia impuesta por el comercio global y el desarrollo de la ciencia: los lenguajes artificiales. Porque el alfabeto es demasiado lento y ambiguo para la era cognitiva que ahora se abre. La revolucion digital implica, adernás, una nueva energia que ya no es el carbón ni el petroleo, sino Ia mente. Supone tambien nuevas formas de relacionarnos que cambiaran la especie: la familia, por ejemplo, fue un producto de la civilizacion de la escritura basada en el control porque necesitaba hijos para la economia (mano de obra para la agricultura y la industria); hijos que ya no son necesarios. En la revolucion digital desaparecen la biblioteca y el libro, producto lineal por excelencia, y asistimos al desarrollo de una civilizacion cuyas caracteristicas son la no centralidad, la no dependencia jerarquica, la distribución y el paralelismo. Y desapareceran tambien los ordenadores.
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