contemplating digital orality

Ong, Walter J. The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History. The Terry Lectures. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967.

Ong discusses the third stage of verbalization and notes that the process is sequential:

The past century has seen the world enter into a new stage beyond orality and script and print, a stage characterized by the use of electronics for verbal communication. There has been a sequence within this stage, too: telegraph (electronic processing of the alphabetized word), telephone (electronic processing of the oral word), radio (first for telegraphy, then for voice; an extension first of telegraph and then of telephone), sound pictures (electronic sound added to electrically projected vision), television (electronic vision added to electronic sound), and computers (word silenced once more, and thought processes pretty completely reorganized by extreme quantification). (87-88).

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Man communicates with his whole body, and yet the word is his primary medium. Communication, like knowledge itself, flowers in speech (1).

Ong, Walter J. The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History. The Terry Lectures. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967.

This work, published in 1967, reveals many of the origins of Ong’s more popular Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. Routledge, 2002. Here, he discusses the history of language and communication from purely oral cultures to the chirographic era to print, and on to the electronic era. He states that, in terms of communication media, cultures can be divided into three successive stages, which are essentially stages of verbalization:

1. Oral or oral-aural;
2. Script, which reaches critical breakthroughs with the invention first of the alphabet and then later of alphabetic movable type; and
3. Electronic.

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McLuhan, M. (1997). Media research: technology, art, communication: Routledge.

In many preliterate cultures the binding power of oral tradition is so strong that the eye is subservient to the ear. … In our society, however, to be real, a thing must be visible, and preferably constant” (39).

I largely concur with this direction of thought. In the era of primary orality, the spoken word was the main means of communication. However, I’d argue that that was experienced in combination with and simultaneous to the visual, the ability to see the speaker’s appearance and all of his or her non-verbal cues. But, today, we are certainly a visual species; we trust the eye, finding more faith and understanding when we see it in addition to experiencing it with other senses. In some ways, this view is also relevant to social presence theory and the media theories (richness, synchronicity, naturalness) that rate communication methods on hierarchical levels, each placing FtF communication as the highest and most rich, synchronous, natural, etc. method, since FtF includes visual, aural, and immediacy. Read the rest of this entry »

“To be cyberliterate means that we need to understand the relationship between our communication technologies and ourselves, our communities, and our cultures (16).”

Gurak, L. J. (2001). Cyberliteracy: Navigating the internet with awareness. New Haven Conn.; London: Yale University Press.

Gurak defines cyberliteracy as “a critical technology literacy, one that includes performance, but also relies heavily on people’s ability to understand, criticize, and make judgments about a technology’s interactions with, and effects on, culture (13).” Noting Kathleen Welch, she goes on to state that “Cyberliteracy… is about consciousness. It is about taking a critical perspective on a technology that is radically transforming the world (16).” Read the rest of this entry »

Happy New Year, All!

Following my October 24th post of a proposal to present at the ATTW conference, I recently got word that it was accepted. I am certainly going to accept the offer, and I’m thoroughly excited for the opportunity to put out to the academic community this concept (Simulating Synchronicity in the Online Classroom Through Embedded Audio-Visual Discussions), which is a foundational portion of my dissertation research.

While the elation of ATTW acceptance has not yet cleared, I am now diving into creating a proposal to present in June at the Media Ecology Association conference. This year it is being held at St Louis University (yes, I will be in awe, basking and wallowing in the Ong archives, at every open moment). I think this is a wise venue in which to discuss my ideas on digital orality with the academe community.