THE WRITING CODE

– New PBS Series Probes the Origin, Technology and Art of Writing –

 “Not only does THE WRITING CODE educate people about this neglected part of our world, but it’s hugely entertaining — visually gorgeous, clear in its explanations ... everyone will love it.”
– Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor, Harvard University

What is writing and how does it work? How long have we had it? Is it, as some experts claim, the most important invention in human history? THE WRITING CODE, a new series of films on the origin, technology and art of writing,airs Sundays at 7:00 PM, beginning September 21, on WKYU-PBS. No television series has covered this subject before.

Each of the three one-hour films is led by a colorful collection of authors and writing systems experts who take the place of a narrator and disclose where writing started and how it has been used since it was invented some 5,000 years ago. Filmed in the U.S., England, Egypt, India and Iran, locations range from the remote Iran mountaintop where cuneiform was first deciphered to the contemporary world where writing is everywhere — even as the world faces a “literary crisis.”

More than 40 writers and linguists were interviewed for THE WRITING CODE, including novelists Elmore Leonard and Margaret Atwood and poet Quincy Troupe; Bill Bright and Peter Daniels, authors of The World’s Writing Systems; Richard Parkinson with the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum; Steven Pinker, Harvard Professor and best-selling author; Denise Schmandt-Besserat, theorist on origin of writing from tokens; Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web; Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library; Neil deGrasse Tyson (who writes with a quill pen), host of PBS’ “NOVA scienceNOW” and director of the Hayden Planetarium; Dr. Zahi Hawass, head of antiquities for Egypt; Chad Smith, Chief of the Cherokee Nation; Sam Schwartz, who authored the street sign “Don’t Even Think of Parking Here”; Carol Chomsky, expert on learning to read; and many others.

THE WRITING CODE is made up of three one-hour films:

• “The Greatest Invention” -- Writing is the technology that made civilization possible. The first episode reveals how and when writing was invented; what is common to all writing systems; and how writing was invented to keep track of things. Modern knowledge of history and the look of the world today — so dominated by the written word — would not have been possible without cuneiform and ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic, Chinese pictographs, syllabaries and the amazing invention of the alphabet. The invention of writing 5,000 years ago may be more important than the invention of the wheel.

• “The Art and the Craft” -- The history of writing is a series of big and little revolutions. To write, one needs both something to write on and something to write with. Writing evolved with technologies like papyrus and paper, moveable type and the mass production of books and newspapers — as well as with fortune cookies and street signs. In the second episode, viewers learn what, why and how writers write — using clay, stone, papyrus, paper, stylus, quill pen, the Gutenberg press, the typewriter, stenotype, linotype, the laptop and other methods. Writers living and dead are discussed — from Homer and Melville to Elmore Leonard, Quincy Troupe and Margaret Atwood. The program explains the difference between prose and poetry, laws and epics, and grammar and punctuation. Meanwhile, the episode reveals, everyone can use an editor — except a genius like Robert Frost.

• “The Literate Society” – Today, we write down mathematics, music and language. The final program in the series reveals that all the achievements of science, art and politics are the result of these forms of writing. When writing was first invented, only scribes, priests and rulers were the literate “elite.” Since democracy needed literate citizens to vote intelligently, 19th-century Americans came up with the revolutionary idea that everyone should learn to read and write. From the one-room schoolhouse to today’s overcrowded public classrooms, learning to read and write has never been easy. With the “new renaissance” resulting from computers and the World Wide Web, people are writing in ways that nobody anticipated just a few years ago, such as text messaging and blogging. In this episode, Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web, warns of the importance of keeping his invention a “free and open space.” Today, being literate requires that we not only know how to acquire information, but how to sift through vast quantities of data. The new literacy is “knowing what to throw away.” New ways of learning, new art forms and new scientific breakthroughs lie before us, and, in 30 years, the world may be totally transformed.

THE WRITING CODE, produced by Ways of Knowing, Inc.,is the sequel to THE HUMAN LANGUAGE, a highly successful PBS series on what language is and how it works. It was the only comprehensive series on this subject ever made for television. THE WRITING CODE is also a first — no other television program has explored the subject of writing in such depth.

click here for a printer friendly version