THE R/EVOLUTION OF TEXT
Through this project we have investigated about how the technologies for writing and sharing knowledge have evolved over the course of history, and how these changes have affected communication styles. Following is the link to access our weebly. Thank you.
http://theevolutionoftext.weebly.com/
Jesse, Terry and Mehdia
I really enjoyed your discussion on the earliest forms of writing (before official writing systems) and then moving through the earliest writing systems. We talked a lot about the shift from oral to written, but didn’t examine pre-writing system writings in too much detail. Plus there was a nice progression through time to examine how things are changing in the 21st century.
Catherine
Thank you Catherine;
It seems the key word to keep coming up is ‘progression’. Mankind is in constant change progressing from what is present to exploration of what could be with an emphasis on a variety of sensory simulations; be it projecting voice to ears or creating ‘physical’ representation with our hands for visual communication to today’s technology that is attempting to embrace all our senses at the same time. I wonder what’s next on the horizon?
Glad to hear you enjoyed our presentation.
Terry
I also liked how you incorporated the earliest forms of writing, cave art, into your project. I’ve felt that Ong’s definition of writing as “a coded system of visible marks . . . whereby a writer could determine the exact words that the reader would generate from the text” is too narrow, and excludes features such as page layout, images and multimedia that add to the meaning of a text.
Thank you Janice;
Ah, we must not be too hard on Ong. He covered an amazing amount of material back in the 1970s (remember the first edition came out in 1982). I commend him for that. And as a writer himself he might be showing a bit of bias. You may have also noticed that his book is very much about the word as there are little (actual no !) visuals inserted. I could say he had limited vision at the time of writing which I will hypothesis was influenced by his 1970s editing resources.
Terry 🙂
I hope my comment didn’t come off as too critical of Ong. I think his book is amazing.
He may have used such a restricted definition of writing because he wanted to show that “writing, in this ordinary sense, was and is the most momentous of all human technological inventions.” He considered writing to be revolutionary, not evolutionary.
Chandler (1995) considers Ong to have a phonocentric bias, regarding orality as more natural than literacy, and sound as more powerful and real than writing. That his book has no images may be due to the time period that it was published in, and the expectations for academic publishing during that time.
Reference:
Chandler, D. (1995). Technological or Media Determinism [Online]. Retrieved, 6 August 2015 from http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/litoral/litoral2.html
Oh! not at all Janice;
You couldn’t have seen the tired smile on my face. One thing I learned long ago was not to accept everything at face value, to search out its context. If we question /critique any writing it is to understand more deeply its meaning and purpose and you are doing just that. Ong is one author I intend to return to in the future. I might even go looking for his biography when we are finished.
Take Care
Terry
Great work guys, your post on the r/evolution of text was very informative. Really enjoyed following the various stages of text.