Discover the Future of the Written Word with Tim Brookes

What does the age of digital convergence, ChatGPT, and globalization mean for the future of the written word?

Writer/carver/painter Tim Brookes offers a 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 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 more information on the Endangered Alphabet Project, visit www.endangeredalphabets.com.

Speaker Bio

Tim Brookes was born in England and educated at Oxford before moving to the United States in 1980. An editor, guitarist, teacher, soccer coach, 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.

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.

His latest book is "Writing Beyond Writing: Lessons from Endangered Alphabets." He lives in a 19th-century farmhouse overlooking Lake Champlain.