In researching the topic of post-literate society, today I
stumbled on asemic writing. And I do mean stumbled.The best
scientific definition I could arrive at for it comes from
Wikipedia: Asemic writing is a wordless open semantic form of
writing. The word asemic means “having no specific semantic
content”. With the nonspecificity of asemic writing there comes
a vacuum of meaning which is left for the reader to fill in and
interpret. This is an example of asemic writing: So is this:
Again from Wikipedia, Influences on asemic writing are
illegible, invented, or primal scripts (cave paintings, doodles,
children’s drawings, etc.). But instead of being thought of as
mimicry of preliterate expression, asemic writing may be
considered to be a postliterate style of writing that uses all
forms of creativity for inspiration. Another attempt at
explanation of asemic writing comes from Asemic.net: It looks
like writing, but we can’t quite read it… Most people make
asemic writing at some time, possibly when testing a new