an opening?

I struggled with where to begin this, my first post to my first blog. I still am reluctant and not entirely certain why. Maybe because I actually read other blogs. But why do I feel like I have to have an opening, and introduction? No doubt, years of english studies and complicity in print-logic....

Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy, a recent read of mine, has helped me get a perspective on how literacy shapes the construction of consciousness and approaches to thinking. Obviously Ong distinguishes between orality and literacy as cultural centers of thought and expression, but he goes further into distinctions of writing--say with a quill, pencil, or ball-point pen--and printed text. So how does this affect consciousness? Well for starters, having to write or type something demands we use a different format/formula than just talking about something extemporaneously, or dialogically, or just casually. But more than this, print also situates knowledge (or knowledge claims) as something external and potentially permanent. We don't have to memorize valuable information like orality-centered cultures do; that information is reified in printed texts. Of course, just because a book exists doesn't make it accepted knowledge, but text is where we now turn to for knowledge access. Knowledge, and thus in part the reality we build from it, is just a copius collection of documents. Maybe librarians should be running the world.

None of this is particularly new or insightful. But here's why I'm bothering to begin with Ong:

Secondary orality--the orality of an electornic age--"the orality of telephones, radio, and television, which depends on writing for its existence" (3). Through the (critical?) analysis and abstraction we value in and made possible by printed text, we realize elements of orality, like spontaneity, are important again. But secondary orality is different from the "primary" orality of older/more isolated cultures, perhaps most notably through the influence of technology. John Winthrop's "A Model of Christian Charity" was only delivered to a few people, though further distributed with text; Martin Luther King, Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech reached hundreds of thousands (with microphones and amplifiers) upon delivery, and has reached millions more through audio and visual recording technologies, in addition to printed text. But even this is a limited example because Winthrop and King obviously wrote their speeches, then delivered them orally, which makes it a sort of hybrid of primary orality and literacy. Which brings me to my next point/intrest:

Hybridity--Ong doesn't deal with this specifically (I'm struggling to remember if he even mentioned the word), but the idea clearly emerges--as in my example above and his (brief) consideration of the influence of computers on writing/literacy. Actually, I'm not that interested in rehashing what Ong thinks is significant about this intersection of technology and writing tools/trends. This is just my nod to Ong for providing my grounded starting point for considering the idea and it's importance.

Hybridity is interesting because it shows how different uses for existing modes of thought and expression are indeed becoming something new, something of their own. Secondary orality is a prime example--old school communication meets new school gizmos. What we get is something like it was several thousand years ago, yet like nothing we've had before. Our consciousness constructs get changed by these hybrids. (Greg Ulmer and the mystory have helped me begin to grapple with this.)

And this is what's happening with computers--or rather, "digital" literacy. A new media is changing how I conceive of puting text to paper/screen. And this blog (all blogs) is just like hand-written journals I've kept, and is nothing like them at all.