This is my last reflection paper for Social Dynamics of Communication Technology. It is a look at writing as a technology and how it has affected orality and literacy in our lives. Enjoy!
Reflecting over the readings for the last week, I was caught by Ong’s statement that writing is a technology. It was something I hadn’t thought of previously as it was just something I did on a daily basis. Ong talks about this invention in his book Orality and Literacy. He also recognizes my struggle stating, “Because today we have so deeply interiorized writing, made it so much a part of ourselves… we find it difficult to consider writing to be a technology as we commonly assume printing and the computer to be.”
Socrates said to Phaedrus, "And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them..." Writing thus becomes the technology to speech. Before writing people only had speech and their memory. But when writing came along, everything changed and it allowed people to "tumble" the opinion of others about as the words were reproduced and passed along.
Ong makes the declaration that, of the three technologies (writing, print, and computers), “More than any other single invention, writing has transformed human consciousness.” He asks us to imagine a world where people have never ‘looked up’ anything, where they have no visual metaphors. There is only speech and by memory history was to be passed down. Sound and time, therefore, had an important relationship. Ong states:
“All sensation takes place in time, but sounds has a special relationship to time unlike that of the other fields that register in human sensation… If I stop the movement of sound, I have nothing – only silence, no sound at all. All sensation takes place in time, but no other sensory field totally resists a holding action, stabilization, in quite this way.”
Before writing, humans spoke to one another citing things from memory. They drew pictures and had various recording devices, but all of these were considered mere memory aids, not script. I wonder, however, if these are technology as well. Under Ong’s own definition of technology, “calling for the use of tools and other equipment… It is a course possible to count as ‘writing’ any semiotic mark, that is, any visible or sensible mark which an individual makes and assigns a meaning to.”
I wonder then if Ong sees these ‘memory aids’ as notes of some sort. Because the pictures don’t mean something specific, and they aren’t a ‘coded system of visible marks’ they are not writing? I would argue that they are writing under Ong’s own definition. The system of marks means something to someone and they are of use to recall something.
In Plato’s Phaedrus the inventor Theuth proclaims to Thamus, “Here is an accomplishment, my lord the King, which will improve both the wisdom and the memory of the Egyptians. I have discovered a sure receipt for memory and wisdom.” Theuth was, of course, talking about writing.
While I am not sure I agree that writing increases memory and wisdom, it does have its advantages for recall. A student in a lecture can recall important parts that stood out because they wrote notes; a technical surgical procedure can be shared with another doctor half-way around the world with out the expense of traveling; and students can visually grasp a concept. For the learner, the sensory of hearing now merges with seeing and a new sense is introduced.
But do more senses equal greater memory recall? I am a visual person as they say, but I also remember a lot of things I hear in conversation. I remember having so many things committed to memory as a girl, but now I hardly memorize a phone number or e-mail because I have it in my phone. If I were to lose my phone I would be in some serious trouble. This last week I was without my computer and had come to rely so much on technology to remember my passwords that I couldn’t remember half of them. This is what they great king Thamus feared, and foresaw, when he said:
“Theuth, my paragon of inventors, the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practice it. So it is in this; you, who are the father of writing, have out of fondness for your off-spring attributed to it quite the opposite of its real function. Those who acquire it will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of by their own internal resources.”
In his book Technopoly, Postman states, “Every technology is both a burden and a blessing… The wise know this well, and are rarely impressed by dramatic technological changes, and never overjoyed” (p. 4-5). It is great that I can move through internet windows without having to do extra typing, but what happens if suddenly my computer is gone again? How will I access anything? It gives me ease, and it takes away my memory. Postman states that when we allow a new technology into our lives, we must do so with eyes wide open.
Like the clock, with its origins in the Benedictine monasteries, was invented to signal the canonical hours, writing was meant to improve memory and wisdom. But the clock became something to rule our lives and what was meant to fulfill spiritual needs was overtaken to give precedence to material interests. Has writing done the same thing? In John Brown’s Body, Stephen Vincent Benet wrote:
If you at last must have a word to say,
Say neither, in their way,
“It is a deadly magic accursed,”
Nor “It is blest,” but only “It is here.”
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