contemplating digital orality

Another consideration for the potential application of digital orality is for those not currently able to read. Digital orality can be a great way for an illiterate person to communicate. That is, it seems theoretically possible to train one to use a basic recording application and microphone. While a truly and fully illiterate person would not be able to decipher all the commands, messages, and features displayed on screen, he or she could be shown where/what certain commands are, how to use them, and where to save files. Read the rest of this entry »

Another characteristic of primary orality that Ong discusses is that it is close to the human lifeworld. This is to say that since they have no real way to structure information that can stand on it’s own, somewhat separated from human experience, “… oral cultures must conceptualize and verbalize all their knowledge with more or less close reference to the human lifeworld. …. Oral cultures know few statistics or facts divorced from human or quasi-human activity. … An oral culture likewise has nothing corresponding to how-to-do-it manuals for the trades…” (Orality and Literacy, 42-43).

Clearly, the points Ong makes here represent many advantages of chirographic and electronic culture. Read the rest of this entry »

“Fortunately, literacy, though it consumes its own oral antecedents and, unless it is carefully monitored, even destroys their memory, is also infinitely adaptable. It can restore their memory, too. Literacy can be used to reconstruct for ourselves, the pristine human consciousness which was not literate at all.” (Orality and Literacy. 15).

This is the continuation of the discussion on memory (see post on 11.13.2007) and how literacy can kill it (since we no longer have to remember so much, but can merely write it down for later recall). Ong also presents the converse in that literacy can enhance the memory.

This too, is something that digital orality can do: Read the rest of this entry »

[Edited 11.15.2007] Digital Orality is a term I have applied to refer to the way we communicate now with technology using audio and video tools and methods. In many of my past blog posts and notes, I’ve used the acronym AVNM (Audio Visual New Media) to refer to new media, such as podcasting, vodcasting, blogcasting, Skype, Voip, etc. I have, however, a few issues with this term. First, it should really be “audio and/or visual,” since some of the tools and applications to which I apply this term use sometimes just one or sometimes both audio and visual media. Also, abbreviating audio visual as AV, makes me recall K-12 educational filmstrips (OK, maybe that one’s just me).

I will acknowledge that one could also extend this category to include written media, such as blogs, Instant Messenger (IM), and email, since they are still verbal communication (as opposed to non-verbal communication) and therefore are a form of orality. However, I do not support this application of the term, largely because placing these writing type of media and pod/vodcasting and other audio and visual media into one big group is to break with Ong’s perspective that they are two very different elements, tools, and forms of communication. [Thanks to John Walter for helping me work through this one].

Admittedly, I sort of tried to avoid the term, it seems a little to sexy, hip, and non-academic in some ways. However, it is accurate, it encompasses all of the communication methods I noted above, it follows Walter Ong’s discussions of our transmissions from primary oral cultures through each milestone to electronic orality, the point where Ong left us. I find this a necessary step and condition to establish, since it is really the essence of my larger research and dissertation focus.

In my post on 11.05.07, I wrote, “We are a writing, electronic, and digital culture. That is, we have writing, so orality is not going to replace writing. … However, what is important to examine is that communication can exist in this New Media (NM) in a form that is more oral than it is textual. “

This is not so radical, when we consider Read the rest of this entry »