The  Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (radio)  carried a series of programs based upon a book titled "The Alphabetization of the Western World". I have not yet been able to find  a copy. The book deals with twelfth century European cultural adaptation to the expanding practice of reading and writing and  acts as a focus for the many social and anthropological theories that have been written over the past centuries.

The term alpha-text it refers to the use of alphabetic characters to store, and  retrieve information for the purpose of communication by way of the printed or hand written word. Now that we have acquainted ourselves with the definition we will go on to some historical  background.

an overview

For thousands of years prior to the twelfth century the average human communication process took place at the personal appearance level between two individuals each person using information received from each of their five senses, (seeing; hearing; touching; smelling; tasting), to evaluate the integrity of the other. The introduction of alpha-text reduced the number of senses used in each persons integrity evaluation process - to one (vision) - although the writer uses vision, touch and smell in the creation of his or her written work, the reader is normally not in front of the writer.
 

 The series also mentioned that current use of human memory is not as good as it used to be mainly  because we depend upon alpha-text as a replacement, and therefore do not develop our memory as we once did. Although some argue that human memory is fallible and should not be relied upon.  Our modern society is much more complex with many more choices than were available in the past. But it is not my intent to enter into a debate on memory. Let us get on with the main thesis of this document.

The Impact of alpha-text on human freedom:

The impact of alpha-text on human freedom is evaluated by looking at the change in the content of religious paintings. The devil is now ( the twelfth century) being portrayed as the recorder of every person's secret sins. Christian  Monks are also portrayed in this recording of each person's secret sins, (a sin is defined as a thought that contradict's  Christian morality).

The growing Christian belief that there is somewhere a record , that contains all our secret sins  resulted in a great  increase in the use of church  confessional services. Your sinful thoughts are now recorded and will never be forgotten by either the devil or god. (But if God knows everything why does he need these heavenly monks to record our sins?  Interesting question.)

 This act of teaching people that heavenly monks are recording their secret sins may not seem like much to us in the twenty first century, but having been raised catholic, I recall being taught the concept that thinking a sinful thought is the equivalent of committing the sinful act. I could never understand the idea that what went on in my head was the same as though it had happened in the real world,  but many of my playmates just accepted it as true. 

This idea, that you did not have a private personal part of your mind which  was known only to your self, was a new idea.  It did not exist in the popular mind prior to the twelfth century. The poem titled "Unconquerable" deals with the struggle to retain one's soul for the self and not turn it over to the Christian belief of no self.

The use of alpha-text as a group control tool is a fantastic idea if your objective is to control people. Let us next take a look at it's impact on thinking.

Impact on thinking:

Alpha-text brought to the Populus new grammatical rules logical structures and common meanings. An early scholar was quoted as apologizing for listing animals in alphabetical order, because a lion, which expressed strength; nobility royalty etc., was placed, in the alphabetized list, after the lowly eel. It seems that pre-alpha-text ranking was based upon metaphorical criteria, much different than the indiscriminate alphabet. 
 

Our history of alpha-text began with it's popularization by the Christian church as a religious propaganda tool resulted in its use being extended into the documentation and distribution of scientific ideas. Alpha-text does not care about truth or falsity, as it can be used for both. 

The seventeenth century brought ideas which lead to the development of the self-explanatory-alpha-text.  The written descriptive text had to be clear enough so that the reader would not need to add interpretations to the text. This was the beginning of highly specialized language disciplines.  Our modern ideas on textual clarity come from this period. 

I should point out that this general idea of textual clarity has been challenged by some twentieth century philosophers who argue that you cannot guarantee that the reader will not add content which the writer never intended. Back to our early experiences with alpha-text.

The good side of alpha-text

For the first time students could bring into the class texts which contradicted the professor's statements. Thus professorial statements and beliefs were challenged by students. This lead to less personalization on the part of the defending professor who referred to the text as an interpretation. (This allows for contradictory ideas to exist, which is not what a controlled society wants.)  Alpha-text statements were re-defined as interpretations which were evaluated as independent objects. The use of logical analysis could be applied to alpha-text.  Thus alpha-text was a strong force moving  us towards the modern democratic society.

The dark side of alpha-text

Alpha-text brought with it, non contextual personas. The written word could be reviewed by the writer before it was sent to the recipient.  The writer could now evaluate his or her own text as though it were written by someone else, (or get others to contribute to the selection of words).  Alpha-text now gave the writer a choice of images to present to the reader. A less than noble person had a new tool to hide his or her intentions. 

In the past a less than noble person had to  trick, in a face to face encounter, all the five senses of the person receiving the information. Now with alpha-text there was only one sense to trick (vision), yes in the hand written word you could look to hand writing experts for analysis, but with the introduction of standard machine produced characters, another team of analysts came into being, but these sciences are expansive and not available to the average reader. In our age of computers and the Internet alpha-text has become the main tool of the deceivers. Yes deceivers were with us in the old mail delivery pen pal days. With our kids having easy access to the internet, and with their immature attitudes they are easy prey for the modern deceiver..

Alpha-text it can be argued has brought  us a great deal of good and a great deal of bad, but in the end it is just a tool used by good and bad people.

In my next essay I will explore the use of alphatext logic and how it contributes to our understanding of what we read.