Do we need a language?

Almost half a year ago, on literacy day, we wrote about tests in the Russian language. As you know, the rules of the Russian language change, enter the exam, and more. As it turned out, interesting changes are taking place in the formation of the USA. Recently, the publication ABC News has published the news that in many US states have excluded writing from the curriculum. Now American children will write in block letters.

In 41 states recipes are not mandatory. States can continue learning merged letters of their own accord (and at their own expense). For example, Massachusetts and California left this subject in the curriculum. By the way, parents and representatives of education continue to consider training in a consistent letter as necessary, especially for children who have written the text reduced to typing SMS and chatting on Facebook.

As Matt Cardoza, a spokesman for the Georgia Department of Education, said, “The process of learning a solid letter is quite laborious and time consuming, but it’s much less useful than learning how to type on a keyboard, which is more necessary for students in middle and high school. Testing will no longer take into account the continuous writing, and if something is not important, it means that it does not make sense to teach it. ”

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At the same time, many parents and representatives of education continue to consider training in a consistent letter as necessary - especially for teenagers, who do nothing but crush their thumb while typing SMS.

"I am very upset about the reforms in the secondary school," says the mother of two children, Lisa Feaklos. She liked that her 7-year-old son Joe learned to write together.

“I saw that it improves his fine motor skills and softens the sharp corners of his character. He began to show more interest in drawing, because it became easier for him to move the brush and he began to get those forms that had not previously been given. ”

On the one hand, the abolition of the recipe is a rejection of tradition, but recalls descriptive geometry, which in recent years has actually died - with a computer and AutoCAD installed on it, the need to mess with pencils, erasers and drawing paper has disappeared by itself. Why draw letters in accordance with GOST, when on the keyboard you can type any text in any font and print any drawing on a plotter. If there is any need for this at all, you can also read the drawings from the screen of a tablet or PDA, which is much more convenient.

Returning to the recipe, those who were tortured in the first classes of Soviet schools in the pen-writing classes, and who remember the “non-spillout” ink-pot, are still far from old people.

And they had a dream of their entire elementary school - quickly grow up and start writing with a fountain pen. And then, the transition to a fountain pen was through “inserts”, and they were allowed to use pens only after the fourth grade — it was believed that this skill of using fountain pens was more important than these new-fashioned ballpoint pens.

Suffered not only the younger generation. Filling out documents, signing them with a ballpoint pen was prohibited. The signature was considered invalid. And only from 1965, when the production of fountain pens of acceptable quality was established in the USSR, did the rules begin to soften.

Recite, if you discard the romance (a letter of the beloved, handwritten with beautiful curlicues ...) and the development of fine motor skills in children, it can be considered the same attachment, like fountain pens. Obviously, after some couple of decades and the notebooks themselves, in which notes are kept, will become electronic.

After all, these records can be saved (have you seen your school notebooks long ago?), “Share”, enrich with dictaphone recordings or photographs of the school board. Printed letters are easier to recognize by some Evernote and make them available for quick contextual search.

This question has raised TrendClub users so much that another interesting topic has arisen in their discussions.

There will be no language in the future.

Attention! In the future there will be no language at all. At least in the form in which we have it. So you can not be upset about the fact that the letters will no longer be written in words, but only printed. Indeed, in the future, nothing will have to be written at all, since the language itself, as a means of transmitting information, will become irrelevant and become extinct.

You know that you can easily work at the computer during the day and not pick up the keyboard? One mouse today is enough to surf the Internet (by clicking on hyperlinks), listen to music, draw ...

There are voice control systems and people, for example, without hands, can do everything that you do with the keyboard. There are special “Thinkers” - for example, the Guger Technologies development team from Germany 4 years ago released the first computer control system using brain signals (BCI). The system allows the user to create and send E-mail messages, as well as manage computer games. Without a mouse and without a keyboard.

When such technologies reach the required level, the need for these rudimentary means of data input, these interface appendices, which allow us to communicate with the computer, will disappear.

The same will happen with the language. By itself, language was necessary for man as a means of communication. Transfer of useful information to one or a group of persons. Writing was used (and continues to be used) in order to transmit this knowledge without direct communication. Language is now the rudiment of humanity. You have to use it due to the fact that so far there are no other possibilities for the transmission of information.

But in fact, they certainly are. The cinema was once “mute” and those black and white funny pantomimes understood everything. Pictures in the Hermitage can convey the feelings and mood of the artist (why not information?). Music is another tool for transmitting information, a way for a composer to express his feelings and emotions ...

Technologies need to take a very small step in order to learn how to transmit information at a distance, without any language - Russian, English or extinct Coptic. Now no one is surprised at the opportunity to contact any person anywhere in the world (almost) by mobile phone. The next step will be telepathy (biological or implants, this is not so important).

And when a person can transmit information “from the brain to the brain,” without the mediation of the speech apparatus, then unprecedented opportunities will open up before humanity. Just imagine that instead of explaining to a friend about how well you rested with your grandmother in the village, you “throw” these experienced memories to him and he understands everything in a few seconds. Without all these searches for the right words, a description of the beauty of the neighbor girl and the wonderful taste of fresh milk?

Even the simple phrase “We returned late in the evening from a small river, and came under a thunderstorm, hid from the rain under an oak tree” will not convey to your friend all the excitement that you have experienced from this exciting communication with nature.

Words like concrete blocks cause your thought (or the thought of your listener) to run in a strictly defined sequence. And you should always understand that the same words for different people can mean different things. There are thousands of nuances - from linguistic determinism (for example, the Eskimos have 7 different words to designate snow), ending with the mood and attentiveness of the listener. And these nuances ultimately distort the primary information.

The width of the stream of information that is available now with the help of this outdated device called "Language" is ... 3000-5000 characters per minute (see reading speed guidelines). It's not even dial-up ...

If you think about it, then the flow of information pours wildly in a thin stream, chain word for word ... Instead of getting it completely, a person is forced to collect all these words of a bisserco on a thread, build them into sentences, comprehend, pass through his associative apparatus and memory ... This set of puzzles very rarely produces a whole picture ...

In the future, mankind will be able to make a communicative revolution, expand and enrich this own communication channel of perception of new information, it remains to wait for only some technologies ... And the language (whatever it is) will die in words.

In the meantime, here are just some of the features:

• A professor who does not dictate a physics course to students, but is wholly sharing with them
• A group of scientists arranging telepathic brainstorming
• Mom, sharing the memory of that pain from an electric shock that was once tested with her son, instead of telling him strictly, “Don't put the plug in the socket!”.
• In love, instead of reading poetry ... (in the furnace verses!)
• Friends wishing to help a friend who is lying in the hospital with a broken leg send him pleasant experiences and fun things.

So do not lament the recipe. Singularity will surprise you much more! :)

PS According to the ancient legend, after the Flood, humanity was represented by one people speaking the same language. From the east, people came to the land of Sennaar (in the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates), where they decided to build a city (Babylon) and a tower to the sky to “make a name for themselves”. The construction of the tower was interrupted by God, who created new languages ​​for different people, because of what they no longer understand each other, could not continue building the city and the tower and scattered throughout the land.

PPS Here collected thoughts of users of the site. I hope habrayuzer will be able to adequately continue the idea, or refute it.
Already by what is written in the comments, it is clear that Habr responds well to such ideas. Thanks for the interesting and reasoned answers.