A postliterate society is a hypothetical society in which multimedia

Multimedia

Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...

 technology has advanced to the point where literacy

Literacy

Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...

, the ability to read or write, is no longer necessary or common. The term appears as early as 1962 in Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan

Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist...

's The Gutenberg Galaxy

The Gutenberg Galaxy

The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man is a book by Marshall McLuhan, in which he analyzes the effects of mass media, especially the printing press, on European culture and human consciousness...

. Many science-fiction societies are postliterate, as in Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury

Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...

's Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 is a 1953 dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury. The novel presents a future American society where reading is outlawed and firemen start fires to burn books...

and Dan Simmons

Dan Simmons

Dan Simmons is an American author most widely known for his Hugo Award-winning science fiction series, known as the Hyperion Cantos, and for his Locus-winning Ilium/Olympos cycle....

' novel Ilium

Ilium (novel)

Ilium is a science fiction novel by Dan Simmons, the first part of the Ilium/Olympos cycle, concerning the re-creation of the events in the Iliad on an alternate earth and Mars. These events are set in motion by beings who have taken on the roles of the Greek gods...

.

A postliterate society is different from a pre-literate one, as the latter has not yet created writing and communicates orally (oral literature

Oral literature

Oral literature corresponds in the sphere of the spoken word to literature as literature operates in the domain of the written word. It thus forms a generally more fundamental component of culture, but operates in many ways as one might expect literature to do...

 and oral history

Oral history

Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews...

, aided by art, dance, and singing), and the former has replaced the written word with recorded sounds (CDs, audiobooks), broadcast spoken word and music (radio

Radio

Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

), pictures (JPEG

JPEG

In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....

) and moving images (television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

, film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

, MPG

MPG

MPG or mpg may refer to:*.mpg, one of a number of file extensions for MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 audio and video compression*General Motors Milford Proving Ground*Havas Media, formerly known as Media Planning Group, a media division of Havas...

, streaming video, video games, virtual reality

Virtual reality

Virtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...

). A postliterate society might still include people who are aliterate, who know how to read and write but choose not to. Most if not all people would be media literate

Media literacy

Media literacy is a repertoire of competences that enable people to analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres, and forms.-Education:...

, multimedia literate, visually literate

Visual literacy

Visual literacy is the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image. Visual literacy is based on the idea that pictures can be “read” and that meaning can be communicated through a process of reading....

, and transliterate

Transliteracy

Transliteracy is The ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks. The modern meaning of the term combines literacy with the prefix trans-, which means "across;...

.

In his recent nonfiction book, The Empire of Illusion, Pulitzer prize–winner Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges

Christopher Lynn Hedges is an American journalist, author, and war correspondent, specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and societies...

charts the recent, sudden rise of postliterate culture within the world culture as a whole.