Postliteral Society

A postliterate society is a society wherein multimedia technology has advanced to the point where literacy, the ability to read written words, is no longer necessary. Many advanced science-fiction societies are postliterate. In the Earth society in Dan Simmons's Ilium (novel), for example, only Savi and Harman can read; Savi is a relic from an earlier age, and Harman is a contemporary of the society that has taught himself how to read.

Postliterate is markedly different from preliterate. A preliterate society has not yet discovered how to read and write; a postliterate society has moved beyond the need for reading and writing. All information is either transmitted via sound or some other, more complex means. Postliteracy is sometimes considered a sign that a society is approaching the technological singularity.

Following that, it is safe to presume that postiliterate writing will be asemic:

Asemic writing is a wordless open semantic form of writing. The word asemic means “having no specific semantic content”.

Illegible, invented, or primal scripts (cave paintings, doodles, children’s drawings, etc.) are all influences upon asemic writing. But instead of being thought of as mimicry of preliterate expression, asemic writing can be considered as a postliterate style of writing that uses all forms of creativity for inspiration.

Some asemic writing has pictograms or ideograms, which suggest a meaning through their shape. Other forms are shapeless and exist as pure conception within the garden of imagination and experience.

Asemic writing has no verbal sense, though it may have clear textual sense. Through its formatting and structure, asemic writing may suggest a type of document and, thereby, suggest a meaning. The form of art is still writing, often calligraphic in form, and either depends on a reader’s sense and knowledge of writing systems for it to make sense, or can be understood through aesthetic intuition.

Asemic writing can also be seen as a relative perception, whereby unknown languages and forgotten scripts provide templates and platforms for new modes of expression.