The Poultney Historical Society is excited to host a lecture by Tim Brookes entitled "Endangered Alphabets, Cultural Erosion, and the Future of the Written Word" on Saturday, April 13 at 1pm at the Poultney Public Library.

What does the age of digital convergence, Facebook, and globalization mean for the future of the written word? Tim Brookes offers remarkable and thought-provoking perspective on this question by looking at a range of forms of writing from all over the world that are in danger of extinction.

He displays a carving of a piece of text in each script, leading a discussion on how technology will help—and always has helped—define the nature of communication, and shows how the story of a culture can be seen in its writing, even if that writing is (as in these examples) beautiful, utterly unfamiliar, and disappearing.

For information on the Endangered Alphabet Project visit www.endangeredalphabets.com. This event is a Vermont Humanities Council event.

Tim Brookes was born in England and educated at Oxford before moving to the United States in 1980. An editor, guitarist, teacher and author of 17 books and numerous articles and essays, he founded the Endangered Alphabets Project in 2010 with his first exhibition of carvings in indigenous and minority scripts. His latest book is Writing Beyond Writing: Lessons from Endangered Alphabets.

Since then he has exhibited and spoken about the Endangered Alphabets at more than 150 colleges, universities, libraries, museums, and galleries including Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, Harvard, the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress, while working with a wide range of cultures to create games and educational materials for learning minority scripts.

He lives on the shores of Lake Champlain.

Event Info

Dec 29, 2024, 7:30 to 10:30 AM

Jan 4, 2025, 8 AM to 1 PM

Jan 4, 2025, 1 to 2:45 PM