Considering a world without literacy was an incredibly rich experience.\u00a0 I had never considered literacy to be technology, and had not thought in depth about the implications of print to a society or culture.\u00a0 Questions regarding the effects of literacy seemed to fall out of the pages as I read about changes in our society over the past few thousand years as communication moved from orality, to a combination of orality and literacy(through the lifespan of papyrus scrolls, codex, the printing press), to more modern technologies (hypertext and word processing faculties).\u00a0 Real-world examples came to mind in my own area, of the First Nations cultures in my community that have been, effectively, ripped from orality and heaved headfirst into literary traditions.\u00a0 Where many, if not most, cultures have had thousands of years to adapt, what happens to cultures that are expected to openly adapt, and adjust to the dominant literary traditions in less than a century?\u00a0 There are still First Nations people alive today that can remember a time of pure orality.\u00a0<\/p>\n
New Technologies<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n I began to realize that communication technologies affect our lives as we choose to (or are coerced\/forced\/manipulated) into adopting them.\u00a0 We take on new technologies, realize they ease our daily lives and as a result, develop a perceived need for them and then work to develop increasingly efficient and effective technologies that we can no longer seem to live without.\u00a0 I wonder at how our world will change as a result of online technologies including but not limited to social media technologies and hyperlinking trends.\u00a0 We seem to be in the midst of a huge revolution in an Internet presence that is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere.\u00a0 This presence that we can not see or physically feel, is affecting our society in exponentially increasing degrees.\u00a0 Michael Wesch\u2019s, Youtube video, Information R\/evolution really brings to light the dramatic changes that have already occurred since the introduction of these new technologies.<\/p>\n Branching occurs whenever a new technology is introduced.\u00a0 Literacy has branched off from oral traditions and new technologies are creating yet another branch in the media of communication.\u00a0 In a world where \u201csocial media\u201d and Web 2.0 are new terms arising from technologies of the recent few years, the rate of change is exceptionally fast, as new technologies build upon old, answering the needs of current society.\u00a0 As Francois de la Rochefoucauld reminds us, \u201cThe only thing constant in life is change.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Please take a look at the chart I have attached which provides a general overview of some ways the transition from Orality to Print to Hypertext and Online technologies has occurred.\u00a0 It provides an overview of the branching off which has occurred as a result of these three technological movements.\u00a0 In their book, Remediation: Understanding New Media<\/em>, Bolter and Grusin state, \u201cOur one prediction is that any future media will also define their cultural meaning with reference to established technologies.\u00a0 They will isolate some features of those technologies\u2026and refashion them to make a claim of greater immediacy.\u201d\u00a0 (271)<\/p>\n References:<\/p>\n Bolter, J. and Grusin, R.\u00a0 (2000)\u00a0 Remediation: Understanding new media.\u00a0 Accessed at: http:\/\/mitpress.mit.edu\/catalog\/item\/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=3468&mode=toc<\/a><\/p>\n Theexist.com. Accessed at: http:\/\/thinkexist.com\/quotation\/the_only_thing_constant_in_life_is\/196458.html<\/a><\/p>\n![\"orality](\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540sept09\/files\/2009\/12\/orality-to-literacy1-1024x810.jpg\" "\\"orality")
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