#walterong

[gradgrinds2]

Literacy and Orality Nerds, There's a Walter Ong Lecture Online

Walter Ong's work on literacy and orality marked, for me, a turning point in my professional life. I've since come to find some significant shortcomings in his ideas, but what was most important in it for me was the way it framed the relationship between speech and writing. His work is far from infallible, but well worth learning about and questioning. Read the full article

[newculturesofwriting]

Guest Blogger: The Fault in the Writings About the Fault of Writing

A person's word usually means nothing today unless you get it in writing. You can't just "shake on it." Sure, we have to promise that we're telling "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," but important information must be put into writing, signed, and notarized. It pretty much has to be all but chiseled in stone. However, in the past, the spoken word was seen as the reliable method of passing down history and for handling legal issues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTrPJvEzmwQ

However, in the past, the spoken word was seen as the reliable method of passing down history and for handling legal issues.

In Chapter 8 of Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy, Ong explains that writing has been seen as an autonomous discourse, or a self-contained, independent expression of ideas, disabling readers from directly responding to or challenging the author. It was also impermanent, impersonal, and it was believed to diminish memory. We know this, ironically, because of the writings of people like Plato.

The claim that writing is impermanent, impersonal, and incapable of being challenged is not the case, even more so now than just over thirty years ago when Ong’s book was published. In the early 80s, the world of social media was not so prominent as it is today.

Ong writes, “Writing is passive, out of it, in an unreal, unnatural world. So are computers.”

Today, social media has changed writing from autonomous discourse to a connection of human minds around the world interacting, questioning, challenging, and responding.  In Amber Case's TED talk, Amber Case describes the connection over the Internet as a very organic connection between humans. When I post something on Twitter, people can read it instantly and reply. Social media enables online writers to interact with and directly respond to one another, making it no longer an autonomous discourse of passivity, but instead a very active exchange of ideas by people all over the world.

A note on permanency… Ong also points out the claim that writing can be erased while orality is permanant (you can’t erase your words). But try posting one of your deep dark secrets on social media and see if you can erase it forever.  http://www.ted.com/talks/juan_enriquez_how_to_think_about_digital_tattoos  shows how what we put online is as permanent as a tattoo. Unless you’re able to memorize books like Eli in Book of Eli or in Ray Bradbury’s Fehrenheit 451, writing is a much more permanent method, especially when it’s cast into the realm of the internet.

   Also see www.egcgroup.com/blog/permanency-online-media

In what cases could online writing be considered autonomous discourse? Since this blog post is not autonomous discourse, please respond!