In our current time, being illiterate is one of, if not the hardest, disability to overcome. It is very easy to say that without reading or writing one cannot get very far in this world. The prompt asks us to brainstorm a list of things that one is unable to do while being illiterate, the word "anything" came to mind first. What can someone without being able to read or write actually do? It is hard to imagine going through the world without these two basic and essential parts of of life.
Going back to the list that I made the first thing I thought of, besides "anything," was not being able to read any information from the internet. This is easily a technology based era, when your cellphone can do anything you want it to do and have another 5,000 other functions, you would be screwed if you tried to get something simple, like the local news, off the internet. The way we use the internet these days is more than enough for people involved in news to realize putting information online is a better way to get to their audience; although one might argue you can still get information from the nightly news, how much of that information is relevant or the stories you want to know about. For example, in California an Earthquake, of almost any caliber, is enough to trump anything else going on in that particular news day; if you live no where near the epicenter of the quake you will still only get news revolving around it, and most likely not hear the news you want for that day. The next best thing to do is to check the internet, it is almost guaranteed someone will have reported about what you want, but if you can't read what you want to know, you'll be way out of luck.
Being a big fan of technology it's no surprise that the second thing on my list of what you can't do if you were illiterate was the inability to text, update your facebook status, or do the twitter thing. I personally don't twitter but thousands upon thousands of people do, unable to write or read would make websites like twitter and facebook obsolete. People always want to know what their friends or family are doing, facebook and twitter are two of the most popular ways of doing this. Because we live in this technologically advanced age, no one wants to call someone up to tell them their daily plans, when a cellphone accessible website is so much more convenient. If you plan to be socially active while being illiterate you are going to have a tough time finding out exactly when, where, and what your friends are going to be doing.
So basically, to me, being illiterate would easily destroy more than half my life, simply based on how often I used the internet. Unless you can find everything you need in the form of an audio medium, being unable to read or write will possibly annihilate the chance to live a "normal" life.
I can’t tell you how much I agree with your opinion about being illiterate destroys practically any chance to be successful in life in this day of age. We live in society now that is only moving forward in ways of technology. Every job I can think of even requires at least some little skill of reading. I just don’t think in today’s world one can function properly without being able to read and write a least a little. I imagine if there were say some catastrophic event to occur that ends up destroying a good portion of our society or living in a third-world country that one could get away with being illiterate.
ReplyDeleteThe advantages one gains through being able to read and write well is mind boggling. A person today can easily live a life with being able to just have these two skills alone, if they know how to use them properly and take advantage of them. I can easily tell you that I have grown accustomed to using facebook as an easy outlet to be able to keep in contact with friends and family. A person who is illiterate would be making his or her life only that much hard without these simple advantages in life, like not being able to use several programs and machines made to make your life a little bit simpler.
There is one major flaw in today’s society that being people are getting lazy, fat, and stupid. With advancement in technology there leaves an opening for people to get away with being illiterate. If you look at some studies and statistics taken on how many people actually really like to read the number is horrendously low and getting lower. It is terrifying that we are as a people are slowly turning into sheep where marketing and government can easily take advantage and control what we will buy, watch, and eat and drink along with what we read. It is good to see though that most grade/middle schools are really pushing the importance of reading and writing on their students.