David Mitchell wrote: > Our teacher noted that classical written Chinese was a formal > language of the elite, never intended for general use.
We have a similar story (myth?) about Western writing systems. For a long while, books were produced by monasteries (then, bastions of human knowledge), and book production was a laborious process involving copying by hand. As a consequence of that, books were few and expensive, and as a consequence of that, their distribution was limited to the rich and elite (royalty, nobility, clergy, etc), and there was no reason for the common man to attain literacy. Hence, the elite saw itself as the true steward of knowledge and doled out what it considered proper portions to everyone else. But along comes Gutenberg and his printing press, and suddenly publishing books is much cheaper, and so they come within reach of the non-elite. This quickly leads to a chain of events, which broadly shaped the world as it is today: an educated class rises out of the non-elite, which has access to a new range of skills, and furthermore the tools to record, disseminate, advance new knowledge within itself. The class is eventually named the "middle class", and with its knowledge so rises its wealth, and with its wealth so rises its power, eventually challenging, eclipsing, and toppling the power of the elite. This is claimed to have led to various revolutions, and the (relatively) egalitarian social structures we have today. And of inevitably, given the preceding, some mix in various conspiracy theories where <insert favorite elite cabal> foresaw these events and attempted to suppress Gutenberg's invention, in order to maintain power, or for the good of the common man who didn't have the faculties to handle the new knowledge, etc. -Dan ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
