MAC 325 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Creepypasta, Print Culture, Oral Tradition
26 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
4/10/18 Lecture: The Slender Man
● How does digital media affect how we develop vernacular practices and how we
informally circulate culture?
● Media and culture
○ Oral Culture and Print Culture
○ Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy (1982)
● Orality and literacy
○ Oral culture
■ From the invention of language until fairly recently
■ Based in speech, stories, folklore, songs, etc. (oral traditions)
■ Each person creates their own entertainment
■ No mass production or way to record anything
■ Lack of an idea of centralized ownership
■ Personalized to the individual when they retell a story
○ Early writing
■ Vast majority of people are not literate
■ Writing exists but unless you are in a trade where you know how to write
you are probably still illiterate and functionally in an oral culture
○ Manuscript culture
■ Mostly relegated to religious institutions
■ Monks would copy books (usually religious texts) by hand
■ Only institutions like churches or big libraries would have books
○ Print culture
■ Printing press
■ Beginning of mass production of papers, pamphlets, books, etc.
■ Cheaper to make and purchase
■ Surge of literacy
■ First form of mass media
○ Mass media culture
■ Subpoint of print culture
■ TV, films, newspapers
■ One-to-many
○ Ideas can be circulated more easily in print culture than oral culture
● The Gutenberg Parenthesis (Pettitt)
○ Thomas Pettit
○ “The Gutenberg Parenthesis”
○ The period from the invention of the printing press to the world wide web going
public should be seen as a brief exception to thousands of years of human
history
○ We have been socialized into a print culture
○ Oral culture
■ Re-creative
■ Collective
Document Summary
Walter j. ong, orality and literacy (1982) From the invention of language until fairly recently. Based in speech, stories, folklore, songs, etc. (oral traditions) No mass production or way to record anything. Lack of an idea of centralized ownership. Personalized to the individual when they retell a story. Vast majority of people are not literate. Writing exists but unless you are in a trade where you know how to write you are probably still illiterate and functionally in an oral culture. Monks would copy books (usually religious texts) by hand. Only institutions like churches or big libraries would have books. Beginning of mass production of papers, pamphlets, books, etc. Ideas can be circulated more easily in print culture than oral culture. The period from the invention of the printing press to the world wide web going public should be seen as a brief exception to thousands of years of human history. We have been socialized into a print culture.
