A review by schmub
Technologizace slova by Walter J. Ong
2.0
I can't think of a book that has elicited such wide ranging responses from me. Parts of this are illuminated and provoking, and I'm sure were even more so at the time it was originally published. Other parts I found so unconvincing that I literally laughed out loud. The central argument--that literacy changes the way we think and can think--is not a particularly new one. However, Ong does provide a useful overview of how those living in a world of orality remembered, told stories, and generally understood the world in some key ways that differ from a post-literacy world. He also notes that scholars have often skipped over the key distinctions among a world centered around writing, a world centered around print, and a world centered around the digital--distinctions that the field of digital humanities, for example, has since documented and analyzed.
However, Ong often overstates a clear demarcation between orality and literacy. For example, he claims that "oral tradition has no such residue or deposit" as do written words, but shortly after, he notes that "the elements out of which a term is originally built usually, and probably always, linger somehow . . ." Later, he compares the inability to stop sound and still have sound to one's ability to "stop a moving picture and hold one frame fixed on the screen." This is not a parallel comparison. A more appropriate comparison would be to our inability to both stop and still have light, not something light produces, or the ability to pause a recording with that note still audible. In either of those cases, the difference Ong is trying to establish disappear. Similarly, he argues that vision is different from hearing in that the latter can register motion and immobility, but hearing can register silence and noise. And while it is true that there is never absolute silence, it's also true that there is never absolute immobility. These are just a few of the problems that undercut some of the otherwise intriguing work Ong does throughout the book.
However, Ong often overstates a clear demarcation between orality and literacy. For example, he claims that "oral tradition has no such residue or deposit" as do written words, but shortly after, he notes that "the elements out of which a term is originally built usually, and probably always, linger somehow . . ." Later, he compares the inability to stop sound and still have sound to one's ability to "stop a moving picture and hold one frame fixed on the screen." This is not a parallel comparison. A more appropriate comparison would be to our inability to both stop and still have light, not something light produces, or the ability to pause a recording with that note still audible. In either of those cases, the difference Ong is trying to establish disappear. Similarly, he argues that vision is different from hearing in that the latter can register motion and immobility, but hearing can register silence and noise. And while it is true that there is never absolute silence, it's also true that there is never absolute immobility. These are just a few of the problems that undercut some of the otherwise intriguing work Ong does throughout the book.