Conclusions
This essay may be considered by some to be somewhat academic from the point of view of promoting literacy but I remind the readers of the insight of one of my fellow presenters at the conference, Ruben Hurricane Carter, who reminded us that “understanding and action are simultaneous.” To those engaged in the noble pursuit of promoting literacy, I believe, the following conclusions that can be drawn from this essay might prove useful for their work:

Speech or language emerged so as to facilitate conceptualization and hence abstract thinking;

Language = communications + informatics;

The emergence of language represents the transition from percept-based thinking to concept-based thinking;

Language evolved more sophisticated and abstract forms, namely, the notated forms of language, each of which requires its own unique literacy to access and use;

Speech, writing, math, science, computing, and the Internet represent an evolutionary chain of languages;

With the exception of speech, which is learned automatically whenever an infant is exposed to spoken language, all the other forms of language require instruction or formal schooling;

To read and write, to be numerate, to be literate in the other forms of language is to access languages that are more sophisticated than speech and whose use allows a greater power of conceptualization;

Computers and the Internet are great tools for teaching the three R’s, reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic, because the more basic forms of language are easily accessed and manipulated in the electronic media;

Education should focus on conceptualization as a way of promoting the six literacies;

Numerical notation emerged at the same time as reading and writing, thus the skills of literacy with letters and numeracy are parallel and similar. If one can read and write one should be able to do math – and vice versa; if one can do math, one should be able to read and write.