After Class - Feb 9th 2009

Today we went over a quick review of chapter one. Learning more about the evolution of the written language. It was interesting to see how the introduction of the alphabet changed the entire writing world. With a phonetic based writing system writing became a lot easier for the masses to read. Scribes were not so highly held anymore but instead because there were only 20 to 30 symbols to memorize instead over over a thousand. Also to convey emotion become easier as well, which was a huge problem when dealing with pictographs. The masses could now read. What I think would be intresting to explore more is the effect of massing being able to read had on soicety? We stated in class that 'knowlage is power' and that even in modern society not all people can read. What happens when you give this 'power' to the ingnorant masses? I'd love to find out.