Another fantastic speech, transcribed here, by author Neil Gaiman. This time he's highlighting the vital role that literacy plays in a civilization's development. A couple highlights:
"I was in China in 2007, at the first party-approved science fiction and fantasy convention in Chinese history. And at one point I took a top official
aside and asked him Why? SF had been disapproved of for a long time.
What had changed?
It's simple, he told me. The Chinese were
brilliant at making things if other people brought them the plans. But
they did not innovate and they did not invent. They did not imagine. So
they sent a delegation to the US, to Apple, to Microsoft, to Google, and
they asked the people there who were inventing the future about
themselves. And they found that all of them had read science fiction
when they were boys or girls."
and
"I was once in New York, and I listened to a talk about the building of
private prisons – a huge growth industry in America. The prison industry
needs to plan its future growth – how many cells are they going to
need? How many prisoners are there going to be, 15 years from now? And
they found they could predict it very easily, using a pretty simple
algorithm, based on asking what percentage of 10 and 11-year-olds
couldn't read. And certainly couldn't read for pleasure."
It's a wonderful piece, and I encourage everyone to check it out.
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