contemplating digital orality

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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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.

Continuing the conversation on Residually Cyclical Styles (the cyclical nature of orality and literacy), I realize the next (or most recent) cycle.
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Heim, Michael. 1999 (orig. 1987). “The Theory of Transformative Technologies.” Electric Language, 2nd edition. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Ong, Walter. 1982. “Some Theorems.” Orality and Literacy. New York: Routledge.

Here are a couple articles/chapters and the questions I was asked related to them: Read the rest of this entry »

Ong also discusses that a characteristic of orally-based thought and expression is that it is, what he deems, agonistically toned. Specifically, he discuses that in oral cultures, each narrative and other piece of information is with the knower. This is to say, there is little way to decipher any difference between the known and the knower. Therefore, it is not until the advent of the chirographic culture that this situation changed. “[Writing] separates the knower from the known.” (43).

While this point is accurate, digital orality replaces that connection between knower and known. In other words, writing takes a knower’s knowledge and makes it an abstract, attainable, knowable by anyone. This general concept can still be true; however, beyond the printed text, digital orality allows an individual to still be the originator, the knower, the one to whom listeners turn having sought him/her out. It is then possible for that listener to become the knower, too.