Post literate society

I heard an interesting term on the BBC a couple of months ago and it's struck a chord. I can't get it off my mind, so hopefully writing this will purge the term for a while. The BBC reporter was commenting on the explosion of video all around us, esp on the internet. He said (paraphrase): "We are living in a post literate society".

Post literate? His point was that we went from pre-literate (in Western world), to literate (books), and now post literate (video). So I thought about the implications and whether I agreed. Some observations:

1) Video is more immersive, closer to how humans naturally interprete the world.
2) Books (generally)trigger more imagination since we visualize text. It's more "active".
3) Humans tend to retain visual images longer than text, especially children.

As an avid reader, the thought of a post literate society is a bit depressing. I'd like to think that reading is somehow more complex, sophisticated, and intellectual. Video is "lazy" and reading is "better". However, as Salman Khan shows in his TED presentation, having video as an additional element in education can make a huge difference. Video can tell stories in intimate ways and show us animations (like the formation of the solar system I just saw with my daughter).

Whatever the "cost" of having video encroach on reading, we need to recognize it also has it's own intrinsic value.