How the Secondary Orality of the Electronic AgeCan Awaken Us to the Primary Orality of Antiquity
or
What Hypertext Can Teach Us About the BiblewithReflections on the Ethical and Political Issuesof the Electronic Frontier
Robert M. Fowler
Baldwin-Wallace CollegeBerea, Ohio 44017
Background
• The computer rewrites the history of writing by sending us back to reconsider nearly every aspect of earlier technologies.
• Orality is enduced by radio and television
• Electronic orality has burgeoned in the last decade
Assumptions
• It is the sensibilities that have allowed us to reacquaint ourselves with the sensibilities of primary oral cultures
• Hypertext as paradigmatic of digital, electronic communication
• Electronic communication brings a host of ethical and political issue.
Theories
• Jay David Bolter’s Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing
• Richard A. Lanham’s The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts
• George P. Landow’s Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Theory and Technology
What Is Hypertext?
• Non-Sequential Writing
• Includes any kind of information that can be digitized electronically
• Electronic media are networked media.
Fowler’s Hypertext
* Hypertext demands an active reader; it blurs the distinction between author and reader
Background
• The computer rewrites the history of writing by sending us back to reconsider nearly every aspect of earlier technologies.
• Orality is enduced by radio and television
• Electronic orality has burgeoned in the last decade
Assumptions
• It is the sensibilities that have allowed us to reacquaint ourselves with the sensibilities of primary oral cultures
• Hypertext as paradigmatic of digital, electronic communication
• Electronic communication brings a host of ethical and political issue.
Theories
• Jay David Bolter’s Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing
• Richard A. Lanham’s The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts
• George P. Landow’s Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Theory and Technology
What Is Hypertext?
• Non-Sequential Writing
• Includes any kind of information that can be digitized electronically
• Electronic media are networked media.
Fowler’s Hypertext
* Hypertext demands an active reader; it blurs the distinction between author and reader
* Hypertext is fluid, multiple, changing; not fixed or single.
* Hypertext has no beginning or ending, no center or margin, no inside or outside
* Hypertext is Multi-centered; infinitely recenterable
* Hypertext is a Network text
* Hypertext is collaborative
* Hypertext is anti-hierarchical and democratic
ORALITY AND LITERACY
Walter J. Ong
* Orality is “evanescent” not permanent.
* Orality is “additive rather than subordinative”; aggregative rather than analytic.
* Orality is “close to the human lifeworld”.
* Orality is “agonistically toned”.
* Orality is “emphatic and participatory rather than objectively distanced.”
* Orality knits persons together into community.
* Orality is “homeostatic”.
ONG’s MAIN POINTS
• Orality is “evanescent” not “permanent”.
• Writing and print provide a one-way, permanent document.
• An electronic document returns us to more fluid, shifting, open-ended communication.
• Writing and print and the computer are all ways of technologizing the word.
• Technology is both a promise and threat.
• Technologies belong to an age of Second Orality.
Print Culture
• Authors can be distinguished from readers
• A text is the property of its author
• A text is (or should be) fixed
• A text should speak with a single, clear voice
• A text has a beginning and an ending
• The center of a text is fixed, stable and single
• A text is (or should be) clearly organized in a linear structure
• An author writes by himself, and a reader reads by himself
• The act of writing or reading is (or should be) ethically and politically neutral
Ethical and Political Issues
* The inclination toward collaboration in cyberspace
* Creating and maintaining virtual communities
* The fate of the authors moral claim to intellectual property rights and legal claim to copyright
* Who will provide and who will receive services in cyberspace? Who will pay and who will profit?
* The question of human identity and the human/machine interface
* Sex on gender in cyberspace
* Civil liberties in cyberspace
* The electronic media: force for totalitarianism or democracy? For control or freedom?
Inclusions
• Does the incessant quest for novelty bring satisfaction?
• What grand legacies have we trashed needlessly, heedlessly?
• Is it possible that the electronic age will see the return of a culture both deeply rooted in its heritage and at the same time vibrant and open to the future.
• In cyberspace can we conserve the very best of the biblical traditions?
• By means of the electronic media can the biblical traditions become open and vital again?
• Can the biblical traditions break out of the amber of the printed page and once again live, grow, and change?
• The bible is the product of oral and manuscript cultures and achieved its crowning glory in the Age of Print, but what will succeed the printed Bible in the electronic age?
• Where is the interactive multimedia Bible for the 21st century being produced today?
• In multimedia, what will the biblical traditions look, sound, taste, smell and feel like?
* Hypertext has no beginning or ending, no center or margin, no inside or outside
* Hypertext is Multi-centered; infinitely recenterable
* Hypertext is a Network text
* Hypertext is collaborative
* Hypertext is anti-hierarchical and democratic
ORALITY AND LITERACY
Walter J. Ong
* Orality is “evanescent” not permanent.
* Orality is “additive rather than subordinative”; aggregative rather than analytic.
* Orality is “close to the human lifeworld”.
* Orality is “agonistically toned”.
* Orality is “emphatic and participatory rather than objectively distanced.”
* Orality knits persons together into community.
* Orality is “homeostatic”.
ONG’s MAIN POINTS
• Orality is “evanescent” not “permanent”.
• Writing and print provide a one-way, permanent document.
• An electronic document returns us to more fluid, shifting, open-ended communication.
• Writing and print and the computer are all ways of technologizing the word.
• Technology is both a promise and threat.
• Technologies belong to an age of Second Orality.
Print Culture
• Authors can be distinguished from readers
• A text is the property of its author
• A text is (or should be) fixed
• A text should speak with a single, clear voice
• A text has a beginning and an ending
• The center of a text is fixed, stable and single
• A text is (or should be) clearly organized in a linear structure
• An author writes by himself, and a reader reads by himself
• The act of writing or reading is (or should be) ethically and politically neutral
Ethical and Political Issues
* The inclination toward collaboration in cyberspace
* Creating and maintaining virtual communities
* The fate of the authors moral claim to intellectual property rights and legal claim to copyright
* Who will provide and who will receive services in cyberspace? Who will pay and who will profit?
* The question of human identity and the human/machine interface
* Sex on gender in cyberspace
* Civil liberties in cyberspace
* The electronic media: force for totalitarianism or democracy? For control or freedom?
Inclusions
• Does the incessant quest for novelty bring satisfaction?
• What grand legacies have we trashed needlessly, heedlessly?
• Is it possible that the electronic age will see the return of a culture both deeply rooted in its heritage and at the same time vibrant and open to the future.
• In cyberspace can we conserve the very best of the biblical traditions?
• By means of the electronic media can the biblical traditions become open and vital again?
• Can the biblical traditions break out of the amber of the printed page and once again live, grow, and change?
• The bible is the product of oral and manuscript cultures and achieved its crowning glory in the Age of Print, but what will succeed the printed Bible in the electronic age?
• Where is the interactive multimedia Bible for the 21st century being produced today?
• In multimedia, what will the biblical traditions look, sound, taste, smell and feel like?
No comments:
Post a Comment