Program One, The Greatest Invention, The distinguishing qualities of the human species are that we walk upright, that our bodies don’t have hair, and that we have large brains.  The asset that made us top creature was that we acquired language.  The asset that gave us civilization was the invention of writing.  It happened a mere five thousand years ago.  The first of these films shows where and how it happened.

Program Two, The Art and The Craft, is about writing in stone; how papyrus was made; how Gutenberg changed the world; how the post office works; the life and death of the typewriter; the invention of spaces between words; how to make paper out of blue jeans; and about how writers write – with crime writer Elmore Leonard, poet Quincy Troupe, and author Margaret Atwood who says that “Call me Ishmael” is the best opening line she has ever read.  The Writing Code shows that we are totally dependent on writing in the “civilized world” today.

Program Three, The Literate Society.  Clay school tablets in Sumer, Egyptian scribes, Irish monks putting spaces between words… Democracy brings the goal of universal literacy, from the one room schoolhouse to today’s overcrowded, multi-cultural public schools. Learning to read and write has never been easy. With the rise of the internet in this information age, the new literacy includes an “economy of attention,” knowing what to throw away.