contemplating digital orality

Levy, Pierre. Cyberculture. Electronic Mediations, V. 4. Minneapolis, Minn.; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001,

“Technology is responsible for neither our salvation nor our destruction. Always ambivalent, technologies project our emotions, intentions, and projects in to the material world. The instruments we have built provide us with power, but since we are collectively responsible, the decision on how to use them is in our hands“ (xv).

Cyberspace:
The new medium of communications that arose through the global interconnection of computers.

Cyberculture:
That set of technologies (material and intellectual), practices, attitudes, modes of thought, and values that developed along with the growth of cyberspace.”

While this US edition was published in 2001, this work was originally published in 1997 (in French). However, many of Levy’s theories seem to have substantial staying power in our current age. Read the rest of this entry »

In this post, I return to the conversation about whether digital orality is part of the secondary orality or can be considered a tertiary orality (see post on 11.12.07) and whether there is anything in the current age and level of orality that can be seen as a return to orality (see entire section on return to orality). Basically, new media and digital orality is not a return to orality, at least not primary orality, because we cannot at this point let go our reliance on, awareness of, recalling of words… even if we wanted to, which I doubt would ever occur. On page 3, Ong states, “The electronic age is the age of secondary orality.” So, what is our age now, how is it different from the electronic age, and is it logical to apply a new level (tertiary)? Read the rest of this entry »

“Written texts all have to be related somehow, … to the world of sound, … to yield their meanings.” “Reading a text means converting it to sound, aloud or in the imagination… Writing can never dispense with orality.” (Ong, 8).

“Oral expression can exist and mostly has existed without any writing at all, writing never without orality.” (Ong, 8).

Reading these lines in Ong’s “Orality and Literacy” I consider the ways Audio and Visual New Media (AVNM) –or what I’ve come to call digital orality– depend on writing. I am not necessarily looking at the way it they do use text, as much as the extent to which they need to do so. In other words, are there ways, if we so choose, to increase the amount of more oral/visual-based communication? Read the rest of this entry »

“Computer literate” is obviously not a new term or concept; we hear it often to refer to one’s general ability to understand and use a computer. I suggest it applies to the general ability to use a mouse/keyboard, perhaps to navigate the Internet, or to create a basic Word doc with bold headings and numbered lists. However, given the importance that computers have in our professional and personal lives, the term is really too general and broad for any real application. Without any direct context, a reader or audience of the term cannot fully know the concept to which the statement is referring. Read the rest of this entry »

I have little to say on this point. Rather, I was hoping that others might opine on this. It seems that there are increasingly ways in which to communicate/interact with the computer. This topic does have obvious hints at my interest in orality. I could see successful communication with a decent microphone/software set-up and a mouse as not too far off. However, there are also virtual interfaces already, as well: those screens that can be projected a foot in front of the user’s face. Admittedly, I know very little about such technology, but I do hear people discussing this in regard to a desire to transcend the QWERTY (or other) keyboard.