Frankenstein in the University
Luke Fernandez,
Campous Technology,
May 30, 2008
I agree with the main proposition, that the way we use technology changes the way we think, and in particular, this: "Ong's phrase, 'secondary orality' is still used by current critics to delineate a shift away from the deliberative and quiescent thinking that people engage in when reading and writing...."
The simple transfer from reading to viewing is in itself dangerous. It's not simply that the new media is a type of orality, it's that it is unidirectional, with no participation - or critical evaluation - on the part of the viewer. But is communication by 'reading and writing' inherently better than what we might call a post-modern orality, with many voices, many perspectives, many media (including text)?
No - I believe that what masquerades as 'deep and reflective' thought by the merely text-literate is in fact a dangerous succession of increasingly abstract representations, to the point that the connectivity, the mutual dependency, the society are utterly absent - all we have is the 'text' - and the cold hard calculation of word and number utterly remove the humanity necessary for thought with any degree of texture, any degree of meaning.
No - I believe that what masquerades as 'deep and reflective' thought by the merely text-literate is in fact a dangerous succession of increasingly abstract representations, to the point that the connectivity, the mutual dependency, the society are utterly absent - all we have is the 'text' - and the cold hard calculation of word and number utterly remove the humanity necessary for thought with any degree of texture, any degree of meaning.
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