The written word: a negative impact on teen development?
Ong’s (1982) accounts of Plato’s binary description of writing had me thinking about the impact of written conversations among teens (i.e. texting, tweets, SMS, etc.) on their developing social skills. I have drawn on some of the characteristics that stood out the most to me and will comment, based on my observations, on the impact of written conversations on teens:
- “writing…is a manufactured product” (Ong, 1982, p.79)
- The duality of orality and writing consists of a parallel duality between unconsciousness and consciousness. The act of being in an oral conversation with another person holds a sense of unconscious thought and a natural flow to thought processes. Yes, of course, conversation is a conscious act, but the preparation and expectedness of an oral conversation is limited due to its organic and synchronous nature. On the other hand, written conversations such as text messages and tweets take on a conscious form where discourse can be pre-planned, re-typed, and researched due to its, often, asynchronous nature. My concern is that teens who spend much of their time dialoging with others via this conscious, pre-planned version of conversation will not develop social skills such as intonation and reading body language necessary to survive a face-to-face interaction.
- “writing destroys memory…and weakens the mind” (Ong, 1982, p.79)
- Writing has allowed for information to be permanently documented, which negates the need for people to rely on memory. When relating this back to teens and the easy access to anything written (books, online articles, or otherwise), teens are learning to “rely on an external resource for what they lack in internal resources” (Ong, 1982, p.79). While having documented information readily accessible by anyone is a fantastic advancement in technology, it can lead to teens relying on external sources that may or may not be there when they are needed. Instead, teens need to be developing their ‘internal library’, if you will, of skills, information, and problem solving skills so that they will be unreliant on technology that has the potential to be burned (i.e. books) or inaccessible (i.e. online articles in a power outage).
- “written text is basically unresponsive” (Ong, 1982, p.79)– bullying
- One of the issues at the forefront of technologically advanced schools is cyberbullying. Since “written text is basically unresponsive” (Ong, 1982, p.79), anything put into text can remain unchanged, undefended, and irremovable. Ong also states that “the written word cannot defend itself as the natural spoken word can” (Ong, 1982, p.79). Associated to the unresponsiveness of text is the concern with the person creating the text. It is simple to create a line of text that states a truth or untruth and have zero implications of the reality of the text. Compared to the spoken word, parties are able to defend their opinions or statements in real-time and avoid misrepresentation or miscommunication.
References:
Ong, Walter. (1982.) Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen.
“writing…is a manufactured product” (Ong, 1982, p.79)\
Regarding your post on this… Ong goes on to state that humanity has the ability to make the unnatural natural. As an amateur musician, he gave me an example that really knocked the wind out of me: music is an unnatural act. The instruments that create it is unnatural, the sounds and music that we enjoy do not occur in nature. Its hard, especially for me as a musician, to even imagine that music can be considered unnatural! Its almost absurd but I would have to agree with Ong. There is no argument, music is unnatural and so is literacy.
I too feel saddened when I see a roomful of teens bury their heads in their phones when they gather. But is it possible that this technology fosters a new type of social interaction? Lets take MET for example. If MET was a program only available on the physical UBC campus, I do not think I would have the opportunity to work with people from literally around the world. So far I’ve worked with MET students from Bali, China, Toronto in my group activities. I’ve had a chance to “talk” with a subject expert, a professor from Ohio State who was a guest moderator of a message forum.
I guess my point is that I just do not feel that this technology is as bad as we make it out to be. I too miss being able to walk into a music store and buy a CD. Or talk to a human being before renting a video. Sometime, a computer algorithm doesn’t make a very good replacement. But like Ong says, we humans have a great ability to adapt the unnatural. I think we will all survive.
“writing destroys memory…and weakens the mind” (Ong, 1982, p.79)
True. Ong goes on to state that the non-literate person thinks in rhyme and metrics. Songs and poems help to memorize long passages. However Chandler’s essays (citing Ong’s book) also has us considering what happens to those civilizations that have failed to develop literacy? Where are they now? They’ve been dominated by literate societies. Why? Because literacy changes the way we think. It is largely responsible for empowering people through education and can be pin pointed to the first attempts at democracy. Science, logic, philosophy, religion all started with a foundation in literacy. I do not recall reading this in Ong’s book, well some of it I recognize, but then I haven’t read the entire book yet.
I find it interesting that Ong finds that writing destroys memory because studies have been done in the university were students who only listen to lectures or even use technology to take notes will not remember concepts as well as students who actually write it down. The act of writing helps students cognitively process the information as it slows down the intake of oral information. In addition, the muscles also have a memory of their own and have been known to help retain information. This is the same reason why pianists who practice a lot end up playing a piece without any thought because their muscles remember the song. It also makes me wonder how the act of having text has changed the way music is taught and learned. In the past, music was most likely taught in a similar manner to the oral tradition (very repetitive, distinctive, formulaic, etc). But the invention of paper allowed music to be written down which resulted in much more complicated and longer songs. It also makes it interesting whether digitalized music is considered music. In fact, some video gaming songs are just merely equations inputted into a computer. Would that be considered as music?
“Literacy destroys memory” I think is a pretty bold statement. I do not think that Ong intended that to be taken as an idea that can be applied to all forms of literacy. I believe he is referring to the time period when certain cultures were starting to develop literacy of various forms. From what I understand, many cultures attempted to develop heiroglyphics style language. Some developed an alpha-numeric system where the symbols are used to represent sounds and combined as such. This was adopted but not invented by the Greeks and is largely responsible for the rise of democracy, public education, science, philosophy and western society in general. Citing Ong, without literacy, this would not be possible.
So when he states that “Literacy destroys memory”, I do not feel that this is necessarily a statement condemning literacy. Rather it is an observation that before literacy, people memorized what they needed through rhythms, metrics, music, rhymes and literacy reduced the need for it. Sometimes I feel scholars like to say these things to stir up a bit of dirt and make you do a double-take when reading.
Like daniel and candelaria I am interested in the idea that “writing destroys memory…and weakens the mind” (Ong, 1982, p.79). In particular, I am interested in what you say about this quote based on the idea of connectivism. If I understand this idea correctly, the point of connectivism is to teach students where to go for information. In this model, students (and all learners, for that matter) do not focus on learning ‘facts,’ but where to find information. At a very basic level this involves knowing when to ‘Google’ something or search Wikipedia. At a more advanced level it is remembering what sites, scholars, bloggers, etc. can be relied upon to provide an answer.
While I think this offers promise for knowledge based on the number of resources available, I struggle with whether or not this is a ‘superior’ or ‘inferior’ use of memory. On the one hand, remembering where to find information opens a person up to a world of information (quite literally). On the other hand, I can see people thinking this is an ‘inferior’ use of memory because someone does not really remember facts. I think a counter to this denigration can be found in Ong’s anecdote about the Gonja people in Ghana who altered their genealogical record from a story that a leader had 7 sons who ruled over 7 territories when (for a variety of reasons) the territories had been reduced to 5. The story was changed to say that the leader had 5 sons. Still true, of course, but not ‘accurate’ in terms accepted by literate societies.
So is it ‘better’ to remember ‘facts’ that can be altered or to ‘remember’ where to find resources that catalog more ‘accurate’ facts?
I’d like to address the loss of memory that Ong suggests occurs in literate societies. I think that there is some truth to his assertion, however what is really happening is that people can focus their limited resources towards more useful efforts.
I know that personally I have seen my ability to remember things like phone numbers or addresses has diminished greatly with the advent of smarter phones. I think that likewise, people in general may experience a decrease in the amount of facts that they memorize.
However, this allows people to now focus their efforts to expand, modify, and adapt knowledge. When thought is spoken it is gone immediately, and most information will not make the transition from short term memory to long term, so a large portion of what is said is lost. By writing things down, one can now carefully examine each phrase or thought carefully. I believe that this process is a big part of what has led to humanities successes.
So while there may be truth in Ong’s statement regarding memory, it really may be a blessing in disguise, which has helped us to analyse ideas and thoughts much more carefully.
This has important relevance to education. Now that information is so readily available, perhaps it is more important for educators to teach how to find and analyse information rather than teaching students to memorize facts.
Hi Jesse,
I agree with you about less memorization frees up the mind to do more complex thinking. However, a certain amount of memorization also helps in some aspects of the thinking process. I am referring to simple addition or multiplication facts. Knowing these certainly helps in the process of problem solving. Not knowing them would prolong the process and make it inefficient. Like everything in life there seems to be a balance between what is beneficial and what is not.
Thanks for pointing that out Susan. Of course we all still need to memorize things, and learning to effectively remember things and skills is necessary for success in life. I was simply referring to my belief that our ability to store information through writing – and now increasingly through technology – has potentially freed our brains to focus their cognitive energy on more useful tasks.
Writing has also helped us to keep much more accurate records. It’s important to remember that our memory doesn’t work like a video recorder, and we generally reconstruct memories, which leads to the inaccuracy we have. I don’t know about you, but I am constantly struggling to remember my ever increasing passwords, especially those I don’t frequently use. I think it’s even worse now that my devices usually can enter them for me with a finger print scan. When that isn’t available I’m lost!
You are correct in reminding us that teaching memorization techniques can be a valuable skill, perhaps it’s even more important now that we use our memory less than – or at least in different ways – than before.
I really do not think that Ong inended this statement to be taken as literally as we are taking it right now. The statement he made about literacy ruining the art of memory came at the beginning of the chapter. I think it was nothing more than an interesting way to start the chapter. Kind of like a muse, a hook.
I’m going to pull something I read from ETEC510. I think this is relatively common knowledge by now but here goes… The number of synaptic connections that our brain can be expanded or reduced depending on the how nurturing the surrounding environment. In creases in synaptic connections leads to increase in the mass of the brain. These results were pulled from tests on rats. A group of rats were exposed to a very nurturing and social environment. A second group of rats were placed in an empty cage void of anything stimulating including other rats. The brains of the rats in the nurturing environment increased compared to the other rats. The paper I read went into more details of variations of this experiment but they are not relevant right now.
Anyways, my point is that Ong (or was it Bolter? I’m getting mixed up now), also stated that oral societies lived in the present. They had no other choice. Literate society can live in the past by recording their history. They can also live in the future through research, science and discovery. So this means that literacy creates a very nurturing environment for us. We have greater opportunities to make connections between the pieces of knowledge that we possess. Those connections lead to a deeper overall understanding. This in turn leads to higher capacity brain function and the circle repeats itself.
The problem when talking about memory and literate cultures is that some people find a need to separate technology and human beings. However, for many people including me, I consider that technology is part of our personality; it is an extension of us including the physical, mental and social well being. Just have a look at digital memory, and at iCloud and how innovative and transformative it has become. The question is always on how you could be not reliance on technology and start to improve your primitive abilities like memory? Someone would say yes you may, but does it make sense? Myself, I cannot, and I am sure many people won’t. Writing is the oldest technology that transformed humanity to the literate era. I argue that we memorize information more than the people in the old days due to the influx of information; however, the type of information stored in our memory is different than the people have in the old days. The only difference is the type of contents we are memorizing intentionally or unintentional. Before, people have limited information to retain. Now, we have more than our capacity to accommodate. That is why we are going to depend more and more on technology, as our memory is full of our daily lifestyle data.
The writing techniques have been developed as mentioned by Ong (p. 103) depends on the time that has been written and the environment involved in convincing the people at that time. Today, writing is based on scientific facts to convince the reader, unlike the old days when writing was a narrative story but the authenticity was not definite. Along with what I am mentioning, Biakolo (1999) contended that facts now come through contemporary implements like journals and media that are consistent. The generation of knowledge has become more liberal and logical. Therefore, Biakolo agreed that “information storage and retrieval no longer present any problem, the spirit of novelty is given free rein” which makes the creativity limitless and parallel with Ong’s attitude.
Bassam
Reference:
Biakolo, E. (1999). On the theoretical foundations of orality and literacy. Research in African Literatures, 30(2), 42-65.
Ong, Walter. (1982.) Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen