The Language of Light

The Language of Light
"Words are through. Literacy is considered a disease in the future. The use of letters -- lexia -- will be considered an interesting oddity like Bobby Fischer. All this language is flocking us in. Remember the great dyslexic joke -- 'Are you worried?' 'No I just leave it all up to Dog.' Dyslexia by the way will be considered an advantage in the 21st Century. And lexia will be considered a pathetic, addictive disease to letters like G-O-D.
		"I learned all this from McLuhan. McLuhan said that he only knew what he was thinking when he said it, when he would say it in a conversation. And I watch my own words, like balloons, coming up from cartoons. I watch the words balloon out there, and know that many different people will have many different interpretations as to what they mean. It's amazing how addicted we are to some of these words and how limiting they are.
"The new language is a language of light, electrons, electricity. I must tell you that I don't think anyone over the age of 40 can really understand what's going on. You cannot understand the power of digital language or the crippling evil of literacy. McLuhan understood it. That's why he was literally discredited in his own university in Canada. If you're over the age of 30 to 35, you may not get it. For the kids who have grown up in the electron screen, digital age, that's their first language. That's a very provocative thing for me to say. But it's not a cruel thing.
		"If you're over the age of 40 and you want to know what's going on, get the 15-year-old kid next door and watch what that kid can do. In the next five years, you are going to see schools flooded with inexpensive light machines that package ideas so that boom, boom, boom -- we can communicate. And light comes in through the eyes. -- Timothy Leary to Author, 1993

**For more, check out Leary's videotape, "How To Operate Your Brain."

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The Tripper from West Point

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