CMNS 110 Lecture 3: Week 3 Reading Notes
24 Mar 2013
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
The persistence of the word by james gleick (pp. Walter ong jesuit priest, philosopher, cultural historian. Declared the electronic age to be a new age of orality; secondary orality with radio, telephone and television. The written word is the mechanism by which we know what we know. When word is instantiated onto paper, it takes on a separate existence as artifice. A product of tools, and is a tool. Helps retain information across time and space. An intrusion into culture; laid the basis for the destruction of the oral way of life and oral modes of thought. Plato said writing will produce forgetfulness of minds. Writing is an elixir not of memory, but of reminding. Offers pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom. Turns the act of abstraction into a tool for determining what is true and what is false. Marshall mcluhan famous spokesman for bygone oral culture.
