Recently, I've been running into problems of trying to figure out how in the Sixth World, a period of "functional illiteracy" as they put it, information is properly conveyed, especially those things that could only be figured out by reading. I've tried to phase out reading as much as possible when I'm describing things in-game, using spoken explanations of a requirement or somesuch, but it's rather hard to wrap my mind around the concept.

I mean, even in something like Shadowland, where they have the posters putting up information, are those supposed to be actual BBS-style posts, or is it more like an audio replication? I could imagine that the high costs of audio would be much too great for people to just have mini-recorders with them everywhere or something.

So for instance, how in your game would you resolve:
-Someone passing a note to the group
-Informational sign on a building
-Billboard-style advertising

and so on?

Just make sure that most characters have Read and Write 2 (at least) in their primary language.

DNI makes a lot of stuff easy.

Think about things like online chat language. U means "you" to everybody now; it's not considered slang. Throw in that some asian characters are universally recognized. Consider instructions like they have on airplane safety cards.

It's really amazing how "iconerate" we already are. Take smilies for instance. Or the other day I was in a grocery store, and noticed that at the ends of the aisles, they didn't list what was in the aisle in words, but in pictures: fresh produce, meat, pop, ice-cream etc. I'm looking at all the symbols on my computer's tool bar right now, and I imagine that I could apply them anywhere: home, search, favourites, an hourglass or a watch icon means wait a minute. Consider traffic signs. We probably all know what a red octagon means, right?

Or here's an approach: instead of imagining that you're writing for somebody who's kind of dumb and uneducated, imagine you're writing for a group of people who speak many different languages.

Personally I think the whole thing is a little silly. It completely flies in the face of reality. Literacy rates are continuing to climb as technology advances. Ultimately learning to read icons to the point that they can replace written language would require so many new, non-intuitive images to remember that it's simply ridiculous. Sure we'll see more icons in common writing, but we'll also see more writing in general. Until technology becomes so pervasive that every message can be transmitting directly to the brain (which seems unlikely with magic around), writing will continue to exist in its current capacity (more or less). I have done away with the r/w skill being half of the linked language skill.

Actually, if you go deeper than that and learn the radicals, the strokes, character construction, you'd be surprised by how it's actually not "pictures", at least not as much as Hieroglyphics. I actually don't think it's terribly apt to compare Chinese to Hieroglyphics, but that's speaking as someone who has studied and speaks Chinese (Mandarin, anyway ).

To a layperson..."look, pictures!!".

And I'm another in the "SR canon's supposed illiteracy is ridiculous for many many reasons" camp. For what it's worth, anyway.

Well, Chinese was intentionally designed to a unified writing system for a country that had several different spoken language. Creating a writing system which crosses spoken language barriers requires heavy iconography.
Phonetic writing systems, which are designed to represent sounds, only work in one language at a time.

I suppose that it is less functional illiteracy and more of another step toward creating a universal written language.

However, DNI does some a lot of problems. There is no need to read, write, or speak a language if you just think into your pocket secretary and have it transmit the message to your friend's pocket secretary.

I think a lot of this hinges on how we choose to define literacy. I would imagine that in the sixth world, the "literacy" rate would still be high, whereas measured by our current standards, the numbers would be a lot lower.

In the Sixth World, creative definitions have eliminated poverty.

~J

Depending on what your campaign/The Sixth World defines as 'literacy'. Icon-driven literalism is prevalent even now (traffic signs & colors), especially with most fast-food registers. Warning symbols, such as the 'ban' (a red cirle with a slash) & 'warning' (a red exclamation point in a circle) are on the increase.

I would reccomend Hyzmarca's suggestion, but also make sure that it's a specialization (Read & Write 21st Century Anglish, Read & Write Cityspeak, ect) so that there's little confusion.

I always pictured functional illiteracy as being a problem primarily with grammar and punctuation as opposed to actually being able to read or write, but perhaps that is my own level of illiteracy showing that I don't understand what is meant by "functional illiteracy"

I see it as people who can read the single words, sentence fragments and nonsensical jingoistic garbage of a billboard or similar display but can't construct a grammatically correct sentence. They read slower the longer the block of text becomes and can often misunderstand what they are reading because they are not paying attention to the punctuation, nor do they use it in their own writing.

Thus in short simple sentences what the average person writes is understandable. But if required to write something lengthy (like an essay or report) their work would be nearly indecipherable. It would be grammar correcting software that does the work for most people. Thus whilst their programs correct all their own poor grammar, spelling and punctuation it does not help them to read and undestand the writing of others.

As an aside my cousin, an English teacher in a private school, complained to me not all that long ago about the state of english spelling and grammar amongst his students. His complaint was that "they are writing tons of stuff, if you add up all their text messages, but it really doesn't bode well when a student turns in an assignment and they have spelt great with an 8."

Depends. Do you need to know 10,000 of them, or just 100 for day-to-day signs?

~J

Depends. Where are you, and how long do you need to be there?

Seattle, 2055, and for quite some time.

~J

Don't forget the 200 or so standard images you have grown accustom to on your PC and as general law and warning signs. That's not even considering how many stupid variants there are of the no smoking image with smoking replaced by almost anything you could think of restricting.

No smoking is a "stupid variant" itself—it originated on roadsigns.

~J

wtf teh aliteracy thred is teh sux ok thxby

If you are a baby today then there is a very good chance that Mommy (or Hypersexual Teenage Au-Pair, if you're rich) will read to you. If you were a baby in 2060 then it is far more likely that mommy will plug her datajack into your dataack and think to you. This has several advantage. First, you'll know exactly what she wants from you and she'll know exactly what you want from her. Second, it can be stopped by a Silence spell. Third, ninjas can't hear her thinking to you over DNI.
It also has a big disadvantage. It makes learning language quite a bit more difficult.

we lernd reedin in es no frm mom thx

Most smart parents will wait until their child is into puberty before installing cyber for the small chance that the kid might be awakened.
Also the fact that it is unknown what effects cyber would have on a developing child's body.

Would it be cost efficient however? How many times would you have to change the datajack as the child grew? Not to mention the baby/child sized decks. A childs head/brain isn't fully developed so you'd have to take out a bigger portion which could have adverse effects as they grow.

Let's not forget trodes. I'd be they make specialized headsets for children to develop with and use in schools, as well. It keeps the kids up to date with the tech, and prevents from putting cyberware into someone who could awaken one day down the road. Not likely, sure, but the wage parents of these kids know that their kids would be set if they turn wage mage, and wouldn't want to chance hurting their chances. Trodes might run a bit more than a datajack (I don't have my book nearby, and can't remember off the top of my head), but in the long run, what with having to replace the cyberware frequently as the child grows, it would be ultimately cheaper.

Any mother who won't have her child's skull opened up twice a year is a bad parent.

~J

'Nother interesting thing about writing and reading English: Due to a few demographic and historical circumstances, there is so little correlation between what a word looks like in print and how it sounds when spoken, that we English speakers really do learn whole words as symbols. A number of different experiments show that when reading English, we don't connect letter to sound to word to concept, but rather just word to concept (and then to sound if necessary.) What this means is that our brains are kind of wired to read words as symbols unto themselves, not a collection of symbols (ie: letters.) Icon-based literacy is really what we do, and phonics and spelling are kind of throwback concepts.

It's actually pretty cool. You look at a red octagon and that carries a certain meaning. You look at "STOP" and it carries the same meaning. Your brain just sees it as a picture with a message in it. Does that mean that the word "stop" doesn't process as language? No, it does. But the red octagon is also processed in the same way written language is.

I'm no linguist, but that's my understanding of it.

It's not hard to extrapolate that as dinosaurs like myself, who are so used to seeing a word in a certain way, die out so will our concept of the language, allowing for a new take on things.