Final Proposal

In this paper I will argue the different ways in which literacy and writing restructures consciousness, thought, and orality. I will begin by explaining the history of literacy, and the transition from orality to literacy and move fourth to explain how this transition has continued to restructure consciousness, and bring to light different thought processes that aren't as evident in purely oral cultures.

Sources:

Denny, J. Peter. Rational Thought in Oral Culture and Literate Decontextualization. London, Ont., Canada: University of Western Ontario, Centre for Cognitive Science, 1989. GoogleBooks. Web. 1 Dec. 2010. <http:/http://books.google.com/books?>.
This author focuses mostly on decontextualization and how it is the only thing that separates western thought from agricultural and hunter-gatherer societies. This author was helpful in explaining the two psychological dimensions in which thinking varies cross-culturally, and how self contained messages were enhanced by literacy. 


Neuman, Susan B., and David K. Dickinson. Handbook of Early Literacy Research. Vol. 1. New York: Guilford, 2001. GoogleBooks. Web. 30 Nov. 2010. <http:/http://books.google.com/books?>.
Chapter 4, "Literacy and Oral Language: Implications for Early Literacy Acquisition" by Rita Watson is particularly helpful in her explanation of 'metalanguage'. She takes quotes from Olson, Ong, Halliday, to explain it in a way I can understand. Her section on 'Oral transmission' was helpful in my understanding as well. 


Olson, David R. The World on Paper: the Conceptual and Cognitive Implications of Writing and Reading. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994. GoogleBooks. Web. 30 Nov. 2010. <http:/http://books.google.com/books?>
This author is interesting and uses a lot of good examples in his writing. Chapter 2 is helpful because it describes the role that writing may have played in developing distinctive modes of thought. Chapter 4,5,6 are helpful because he explains the central claims of literacy by examining the relationship between speech and writing. Chapter 11 examines a philosophy point of view of how the reader's interpretation of a text provided a model for the mind. 


Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: the Technologizing of the Word. London: Routledge, 2002. PDF.
This book was obviously given to us as material for this class, it covers the history, transition from orality to literacy, among many other subjects within orality and literacy. He has an entire chapter on how writing restructures consciousness. 


Street, Brian V. Cross-cultural Approaches to Literacy. Cambridge [England: Cambridge UP, 1993.GoogleBooks. Web. 30 Nov. 2010. <http://http://books.google.com/books?>.
This author contradicts and disagrees with some of the research and writings of Ong, Goody, and Olson. He takes the reader through all suggested models of literacy from different writers, and applies them to certain examples, while arguing the truth in each model, or the falseness of the model. This author is helpful because he organizes all or most research on the topic into his introduction. 

That really interesting thing

We've done a lot of reading in this class, however I think the reading I liked the most was Ong's "The Orality of Language." All the way back to blog #3 was when we read it, and I wrote about the idea that writing brightens consciousness. 

While researching around for a topic for my final paper, I referred back to Ong and definitely took ideas from his book "Orality and Literacy," but there are a lot of different things I found interesting in his book therefore thats probably why my final paper topic isn't quite nailed down yet. 

If I had unlimited time and resources I would go get the physical copy of Ong's book, read it, maybe even read his other book, "Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness," and most likely research the differences between mostly oral cultures, and literate cultures as far as how they think, how they deal with problems, what their values are, etc. I know literate cultures are obviously more educated, but aside from education I would want to find out what benefits come from being a purely oral culture, and what the major cultural differences are. There has to be a reason why oral cultures still exist, (even though there are few of them) and what the culture as a whole claims they will lose if they change to literacy. I am interested to find out if oral cultures are more creative right-brain thinkers? (since they use art and visual aesthetics to preserve history and values). 

It may even be interesting to find out the differences between dreams from people in an oral culture and dreams of a literate person, because that would explain a lot about what is going on in the minds of each, and also just the simple question of how each interpret their dreams. 

However to find out all this information I would probably have to use my unlimited time and resources to travel to a couple different oral cultures and hang out with them, observe, record, learn, etc. 

Short Proposal for Final

The subject I found the most interesting in this class was the week on Orality and Literacy. 
I'm a big fan of language/linguistics so the switch from oral tradition to writing fascinates me, especially because not everyone today can read or write are are totally satisfied with their oral culture. 


Ong claims that orality and literacy create different kinds of human consciousness, or different kinds of knowledge. "Knowledge expressed through the oral medium takes the form of something directly experienced, where as knowledge written down can be conveyed in detached analytic categories." I've been doing some research, and it turns out some researchers, writers, psychologists are unsure as to whether listening to a story or group of words is different than reading that story when it comes to memory and recognition. Some are certain that listening is better for younger kids and reading is better as you get older. Some claim that we should wipe-out the teachers all together and have kids learn from computers with software and a lot of reading. 


Back in 700 BC when the Greek alphabet had developed, Ong claims this was a shift that "freed the mind for more original, abstract thought." however later on Plato ironically writes that "writing is a mechanical, inhuman way of processing knowledge, unresponsive to questions and destructive of memory." 


I want to argue for Plato, and explore the differences in thought processes, brain, and memory activity with oral/listening processes as opposed to writing/reading. I don't think that students (college or elementary) should have to get an education online because listening to someone more knowledgable of the subject than you is just as important as reading and writing about it. Visuals are important, and experiencing knowledge directly is important as well. 


Different aspects I am trying to organize and put together: Oral noetic/noetic, left and right brain processes, oral cultures vs written cultures, human consciousness, proto-rhetorics 


I know I need to narrow things down, so any suggestions would be appreciated. 

Q and A about Electronic lit.

Q: Hayles mentions in chapter two of his book, "electronic literature raises complex, diverse, and compelling issues." What do you think these issues might be, and how do you think the American culture specifically, would react to the idea of getting rid of print literature all together and leaving literature as digital files before they become books. 


A: There are a lot of people who are big literature lovers out there. People who would never dream of reading a book off of a computer screen, or a nook screen, or kindle, etc. These people want to have a physical book in their hand, something that doesn't require a battery charger, something they can physically look at and physically flip the pages instead of scrolling. However, some might argue that reading a book on a computer can have particular impact to the brain, eyes, and comprehension. One study shows that reading from a computer screen, actually forces one to read slower than they would read paper. 

"By far the most common experimental finding is that silent reading from screen is significantly slower than reading from paper ( Kak,1981; Muter et al, 1982; Wright and Lickorish,1983; Gould and Grischkowsky, 1984; Smedshammar et al 1989). Figures vary according to means of calculation and experimental design but the evidence suggests a performance deficit of between 20% and 30% when reading from screen."

Others claim reading from a computer screen takes away from focus, and can be incredibly distracting. One contributor (Norwegian researcher Anne Mangen) to the Boston Globe writes: 

“The feeling of literally being in touch with the text is lost when your actions - clicking with the mouse, pointing on touch screens, or scrolling with keys or on touch pads - take place at a distance from the digital text, which is, somehow, somewhere inside the computer, the e-book, or the mobile phone,’’ Mangen writes.

Her conclusion: “Materiality matters. . . . One main effect of the intangibility of the digital text is that of making us read in a shallower, less focused way.’’ 


I feel if publishers were to switch to a fully electronic book world, many Americans would fully reject it. We all know that just about anything can be found online, however when the internet turns into the only place we can receive literature, many people will suffer. Not just readers, but booksellers, shipping companies, and even online booksellers. As a college student its always nice to not have to pay for books, however if children, and teens were doing all their academic reading from a screen, I think we would see a big downturn in students' reading comprehension, and focus. 

Darnton's silly circuit

Darnton is a smart guy, we all know this. I mean.. he went to Harvard and Oxford. His communication circuit is a very useful way to go through who's hands touch the book and when. However in Adams and Barker's opinion, Darnton does not focus on the right things. "The weakness of Darnton's scheme is that it deals with people, rather than with the book. It is concerned with the history of communication." (51) Today, the book trade isn't something that is the same every time. The process changes depending on the book, and how the author and publisher want to go about selling it, and getting it into the hands of readers. There are more steps in the circuit than Darnton displays. Take the printing to shipping step of Darnton's circuit. Today, when an author is in the process of publishing they have to think about whether or not they are going to make a website for their book, or a blog, or a facebook page, etc. They need to think about if they want to distribute it online, or if they want their book only in print. Therefore once their book goes to the printers, and the first copies are made, they need to start marketing right away, and to not use the internet.. just plain wouldn't be smart. It isn't as simple as printing to shipping. Books today are sometimes online before they are in print, and sometimes they aren't online until later on. It all depends on the publisher, and the author. As Adams and Barker point out, there is a "spectacular uncertainty of the book trade," and today with everything that is offered over the internet, the book trade will be forever changing.

ABC's and Learning

I thought the ways kids used to be educated through the alphabet and other means, was a lot different than I thought it would have been. Every letter was associated with just about the same thing every time if not changing it up a little here and there. Plus, the idea behind "A= Apple" really stuck because kids today are still learning their ABC's starting with "A is for Apple." 

Once I read the blog assignment for this week I could only think about images and how they are represented in our society. According to Isaac Watts, "An Idea is generally defined a representation of a thing in the mind; it is a representation of something that we have seen, felt, heard, &c, or been conscious of."

The image I can't stop thinking about in relation to all of this is...(and I hate to go this route) the image of the cross. Today, we see the cross all over the place, and for the most part when we see it we know that the building or place that it is on signifies christianity or Catholicism. However I can't help but think about how different things would be if the cross was something else. The fact of the matter is, the cross is a torturing device but today, for me at least, I don't think about that whenever I see one. I can't speak for everyone, maybe a lot of people do see a torturing device every time they look at the cross but for me it is a symbol of religion. What if the meaning behind this symbol was more thought about? I'm sure if it were it might get younger people thinking about whether or not christianity or catholicism is such a great thing. 

Or what if the symbol wasn't a cross, and was actually an angel's halo, or something more heavenly and happy. I know this might have the potentiality of changing the bible or changing something that shouldn't be changed but I wonder if the symbol for these religions was different whether or not more people would be religious. The thought processing today behind seeing a torture device a lot may be really subtle but I feel as though maybe if from the beginning it were something evoking happy emotions that would have changed a lot of attitudes toward christianity and catholicism. 

But just to make things clear, I don't know a lot about religion, and thats why I wonder about these things. 

MAPS!

Map #1: This map obviously looks kind of different because what we are used to seeing on the  left side of the map is actually on the right (North America, South America, Greenland) making it look like North and South America is in the east and the rest of the world is in the west. The website I got this from didn't reference this map but if I were to guess I'd say it might come from Australia since Australia is in the very center, looking a little bigger than it normally looks on world maps. Another change about this map is that everything kind of looks squished together, for example Alaska looks like its just a hop, a skip, and a jump away from Russia. 

Map #2 below is kind of hard so see but it was digitally made up to show the different dialects of America based on vowel sounds. It breaks up the U.S into different sections and uses certain symbols to show what their mouths are doing when they speak. I've studied this kind of thing in my sociolinguistics class, and the truth is you can't really make a map that shows the definite dialects of different parts of the U.S because people move constantly, people can have all sorts of accents based on where they are from regardless on where they live, and everyone has a different opinion on which areas speak a certain way. Plus, accents can change in the same state so you can't really group states together and say "these people in this part of the country make these types of sounds, and these people in this other part of the country make these other sounds." You can generalize, but still the accuracy of this map is not too believable for me. 

This map was made at the University of Pennsylvania in order to teach linguistics. 

Those poor authors...

To me, It seems as though authors today, are starting to have the same types of struggles that musicians are having. With music, you can "steal" it off the internet in just about 10 seconds, with books, more and more people are discovering access to copies, scans, or "google previews" than ever. I know some people who have even torrented their books for class. Not to mention the kindle and all these electronic books that you buy for about 140$ and download books for quite a bit less than the physical copy. According to this article....
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703369704575461542987870022.html#ixzz10oqmSafI
When an author's book gets sold in a store, they receive twice the amount of money as if their book sold online for an e-book or something of the sort. This obviously means as downloading books becomes more popular, authors are going to really be struggling. As if that isn't enough the article also says that publishers are not approving as many book deals as they used to, especially new authors that they haven't heard of before. Therefore authors that are trying to get their name out there, are struggling the most because they are having to go to smaller independent publishers who don't pay nearly as much. 
As far as the "fixity of the text" goes, authors not only struggle money-wise, but they also have to toss and turn over the fact that anyone could easily get their book off the internet and tweak it to how they want. Why people would want to discredit the book? I don't know, there's just those kinds of people out there. 
All of this obviously didn't used to be a problem, because books never used to be available to download on the internet. If you needed a book, you had to buy its physical, white pages and black ink book. Or you had to go to the library of course. For research purposes you always need to get different sides to one topic therefore to do good research you had to put the physical books in front of you. Now we have people who take important excerpts out of books and put them online, people who scan the books and make them into PDF's, (kinda like the books we read for this class) Which to me, being born when I was is pretty dang awesome. Because now I don't have to go pick up the book, I don't have to pay for it, and I don't have to read it all. However how do we really know that these excerpts and things really are the important content out of the book? 
we really don't. 
"Any printed book is, as a matter of fact, both the product of one complex set of social and technological processes and also the starting point of another." (Johns)


Books take a lot of time, effort, and patience to get from the writer, to the reader. That is why I say, those poor authors because we are now basically trying to get rid of the whole system, so we can save a trip to the bookstore/library. 

Images as text: Driving.

The readings/subject this week was a little harder for me to grasp.. probably one of the reasons why I'm writing it on sunday night (totally regretting it now). 
The example I have come up with is street signs. They are everywhere, and without them driving would be a lot more dangerous. Yea, there are a lot of signs that do have words on them.. like these:

But there are also not so obvious looking street signs that only show images to get the point across. The interesting part is, a lot of times these signs that only show images are a little bit different in every country. 

these ones below were actually done by artists, and were placed all over Europe. How long they were able to stay there is unknown but the point is, the artists decided to design a collection of "street signs" to put out certain messages. 

The one directly above, I don't really understand but the tunnel one is clever in my opinion. Anyway, to show some signs we are more familiar with here in the U.S.. 

A lot of these signs I have seen before but a lot of them I haven't at all. But just looking at them you can figure them out. Putting them in the right location makes them speak for themselves with no words needed. "These systems of graphic presentation are operational, not merely passive schematic structures. They are active agents for creating meaning, instructions for reading, viewing, comprehending information." (Drucker & Mcgann) 

With street signs they are obviously there to convey information in a way that is super easy to comprehend. We don't want people driving and suddenly having to turn their heads and take their eyes off the road to try and figure out what that sign said. Therefore they have to be cleverly designed to be easily processed by the average human being. Basically, street signs are supposed to be incredibly obvious. However if you're in another country and you see a street sign like those artists have made, you will definitely start to think about what the heck that means. They are pictographs to convey information, that we see every day and don't always think too much about. 

Writing Brightens Consciousness

After reading this article the example that really got me thinking right away was simply the switch of language from sound to vision.

"Marshall McLuhan and Walter Ong thought print helped further reorient language from sound to vision, paving the way for our screen-fixated present."

As simple as it is, language switching from people talking to each other, to people reading and writing is huge. For example, without writing people could have never learned different languages from what they were taught while growing up. Because without seeing the words, it's pretty dang hard to learn a different language just through sound. In short, texts and the "reading revolution" have everything to do with communication. Through texts people are able to learn new things from outside of where they come from. They can learn other languages so they can communicate with others outside of where they live, people are able to imagine what the text is talking about rather than focusing on listening. 

In relation to Ong and what he has written about, you can't communicate solely through sound. Your brain needs a different type of medium to bring out ideas. With speech there are so many other processes going on in the brain forcing you to think about what you are going to say, and make the sounds to say it however with writing you don't need to speak, so there are all kinds of completely different processes going on, processes that happen in the right (creative) side of the brain rather than the left (logical) side. As Ong says, speaking comes naturally to every human, but writing doesn't. Writing and reading is something that must be learned, and practiced. Therefore the switch from only communicating through sound to communicating through sound AND vision was immensely important in human consciousness, and still is. There is more room for interpretation through writing/texts, and more room for the mind to think. Also as Ong said, writing is rebellious! things written down to read are not always the best or most appropriate things to say out loud, and in turn once again have the ability to leave the reader open to interpretation. 

Orality of Literacy

The point in time I chose along Ong's 'Orality of Literacy' timeline was the point when Alexander Pope decides that all poets are expected to be original, and the readers had to react to the poem in a way where it could not be expressed any better. Even further if you were a romantic poet, you were expected to ideally be like god himself, creating phrases "out of nothing," or as it was expressed in latin, Ex nihilo. There were no cliches, no humor, no nothing. 

This is kind of interesting because it sounds like if you were a poet during this time, you were under a ton of pressure to produce great work. Today, poets have just about all the freedom in the world. They can write about whatever they want, use as many cliches as they want, be as unoriginal as they want, even put words in whatever format, or word order they want. I don't think we can say poetry was remediated from this exact point in time but there was a large evolutionary change in the way people continued to write poetry from this point on. 

No one writes their poetry as if they were god himself. No one writes their poetry in constant worry that they are saying the wrong thing. People today write poetry simply to get an idea or group of ideas out there, or on paper. Back in Pope's time people weren't so free to express their ideas on paper. As the reading explains, "In an oral culture, knowledge, once acquired, had to be constantly repeated or it would be lost; fixed, formulaic thought patterns were essential for wisdom and effective administration." (pg. 23) 

In other words, people had to just walk around repeating and passing off bits of information to people or else it would be lost. However in Plato's day, everything changed. The passing on of knowledge was remediated into text, and the new way to store knowledge started to be through writing, and not speech. This "freed the mind for more original or abstract thought," which was evolutionary because it started this break from everything having to be perfect and original. People didn't have to write as if they are god, they could write as if they were themselves with their own ideas, and their own feelings of how to write a romantic poem. Which basically as time went on led to what we are doing right now....writing whatever the heck we want, and putting it on the internet for the whole world to see! 

Remediation/Post #1

With our fast-paced growth in technology today, it is easy to point out a lot of the different remediations that have happened even in just the past 5-10 years. The pace at which the world is inventing, updating, and creating has gotten faster and faster as time has gone on. The remediation that comes to mind for me, considering I'm a photographer, is the remediation of cameras/photos.

When cameras first came about you had to put a huge dark cloth over your head to even be able to take the photo because absolutely no light could get on the film. Soon journalism required photographers to move around with the camera so they had to find a way to make the film covered and light resistant while inside the camera. Extra light was needed, so giant flashes were invented. The kind you've probably seen in movies where the big giant light bulb on top of the giant camera explodes and breaks all over the floor.

As time went on cameras became smaller and smaller, and more and more computerized. Now, no one hardly even uses film anymore (which is super sad in my opinion). Everything used to capture video, sound, or pictures is digitalized, and much easier to use than back in the "old" days when everything was manual, and you actually had to create the photo yourself step by step. Now cameras have at least 8-10 different settings on them depending on where you are and what you're taking a picture of. In fact if you are just taking a basic picture you don't even really have to think when you take pictures anymore since you can just put it on the "portrait" setting, or close up/ far away setting and instantly view the photo after it is taken. No film wasted, no time wasted, no effort needed.

The real remediation of photography however is the use of photoshop.
Anyone, anywhere, who can buy a camera can be a photographer. And if you find you don't like the photo, you can take it into iphoto, photoshop, and whatever simpleton PC editing programs there are out there..(mac all the way) to tweak it to your own liking. In fact, when you see photos in magazines, newspapers, and even reality TV shows, how is anyone supposed to know that photo is real and not manipulated? no one can settle for anything that is not manipulated much anymore, and the way our society has reformed to that is basically if someone sees a photo that isn't manipulated, next to one that is with super cool graphics, and effects, and everything they will definitely more often than not pick the manipulated one. To some people manipulating photos on a computer is art. To me, making photos with chemicals, and your hands in a dark room for hours is art.

However, the point is, society likes to see photos that are out of the ordinary. Things they don't normally see, colors that don't always occur in real nature, people and animals that look freaky, and people and things that are much more glamoured up and glorified looking. That catches peoples eye. However if the photo shows colors they are used to, and the way people actually look in real life, its a boring photo.

Hi.

HEY DTC 375 people! I'm Lauren, from the Eastside of Seattle. Not going to lie, I was a little disappointed at first that it was going to be online. BUT I did take DTC 475 online, and it really wasn't bad. Debating with people through writing blogs can be kind of fun.
good luck and see ya in December!