Saturday, April 10, 2010
Writing Is a Technology that Restructures Thought
Thinking of writing as a technology is very weird for me. But if you really think about it, it's true. Being able to communicate with written word makes mot people's life much easier. Imagine having to use verbal communication for everything. What if there was never a written record of our history and everything was handed down verbally? Imagine how distorted some facts would become, not that they can't become distorted with written word either. But imagine if no one ever wrote down the Bible on paper. Would Christianity have spread as much as it has if there wasn't literature to be passed down to keep the stories intact? Walter J. Ong's essay "Writing Is a Technology that Restructures Thought" made me think and challenged me more than any other essay we read so far. Ong wrote, "A word is an event, a happening, not a thing, as letters make it appear to be. So is thought: "This is paper" is an occurrence, an event in time. We grasp truth articulately only in events. Articulated truth has no permanence. Full truth is deeper than articulation" (Ong 20). It is easier to believe what is written down more than it is to believe word of mouth. If there was no such thing as a letter or a word and everything was here-say, who would have the defining knowledge? I wonder how our world would be different.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I loved what Lindsey said about writing as a technology cause I never thought of it as one until reading and discussing this essay. What did people do before writing?? I bet many things have been lost because of not being able to write it down. Granted some might have had a way of put things down in a hard form but it has probably been lost, because others do not know how to translate it. I do have to agree that it is easier to believe something if it is written down, like accounts of history. People can try and change and add oh my great great great grandfather was there he always said, what ever but for it just to come out of the blue people would not believe it very much unless it can be backed up. Where would our world be with out writing, a technology?
ReplyDelete