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From: Gary Kline <kline@tera.com>
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Subject: Re: internationalization
In-Reply-To: <199806121619.JAA08857@usr02.primenet.com> from Terry Lambert at "Jun 12, 98 04:19:35 pm"
To: tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert)
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 11:02:12 -0700 (PDT)
Cc: dmlb@ragnet.demon.co.uk, tlambert@primenet.com, nik@iii.co.uk,
        freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG, itojun@itojun.org
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According to Terry Lambert:
> > > > The origins of Kanji as an ideogrammatic writing system owe more to
> > > > the need for Imperial China to control the availability of persistent
> > > > information available to Chinese Serfs in support of a feudal society
> > > > than they do to their information density compared to alphabetic
> > > > writing systems.
> > > 

		I've never consider this before or read this 
		before, but it seems likely given the culture 
		of ancient (imperial) China.  

		If you examine ancient Egyptian society you'll
		find parallels.  The ruling, educated classes--
		including the scribes--didn not want the 
		hieroglyphs to be readily understood.  If
		`everyone' could read; if everyone had general
		access to knowledge and information there
		would have been major upsets.

		--Of course change was inevitable, and lookit
		what's happened here in the States: a large
		minority can't read; don't give a damn about 
		it; would rather park themselves in front of
		a television and switch off whatever cortical
		neurons were left.

		gary kline

		PS: my ppp link to thought.org broke an hour
		ago so I've resub's to -hardware from this addr.


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