Another sign of post-literacy

No way anybody’s going to abandon privacy policies anytime soon – not with the FTC’s and others’ calls for ever greater disclosure of mobile and Web services’ privacy practices (e.g., see this). But no one reads them – even if they could get through all the legal verbiage without nodding off. Knowing this, Mozilla, the people who brought you the Firefox Web browser, and some privacy advocates decided to conduct an experiment, the New York Times reports. In an effort to make sites’ privacy disclosures actually useful to users, they’re vetting 1,000 Web sites’ privacy policies and assigning to them little icons that tell users – at a glance – what the sites are doing with their data. - Anne Collier, "Privacy Policies Made Palatable" Net Family News, November 27, 2012.

Really, does anyone actually need to read any more? Gettin' more post literate* as a society everyday. 

Libraries for a Post-Literate Society: "...the postliterate as those who can read, but choose to meet their primary information and recreational needs through audio, video, graphics and gaming. Print for the postliterate is relegated to brief personal messages, short informational needs, and other functional, highly pragmatic uses such as instructions, signage and time-management device entries – each often highly supplemented by graphics. The postliterate’s need for extended works or larger amounts of information is met through visual and/or auditory formats."