Temporary Closure

Okay, I'm going to make an attempt to wrap this whole thing up for the moment.

I have to say, first of all, that I have enjoyed this method of research and response. This is my first blog and, as I have always been fairly ignorant of the whole blogosphere that has existed for well over a decade, the thought of maintaining one unnerved me at first. However, I have actually grown pretty fond of it and could definitely see myself utilizing this in my personal life as well as my professional life (whatever that will be). The educational opportunities here are great and I think the network that can be created is extremely beneficial.

I would also like to keep posting on this blog as I find more information on the subject. There has been a lot I've skipped over or left out that would be very beneficial for my argument, but maybe I can revisit those soon. There's also more that I haven't discovered yet. For instance, tomorrow evening I am putting on a poetry and short story reading in my hometown that I'm planning on recording and uploading on Facebook and on here. I think it would be a great addition to my topic, especially with the talks about spoken word poetry. This is our third event, and it is really great to experience something that is based in oral tradition. Hopefully there will many more events, each unique, that I can upload.

So down to business.

We started with a talk on language and the meaning we assign to words as being completely arbitrary to the words themselves. This is embodied in the ideas of Saussure's signified and signifier, and it ties in later on with the discussion of orality and literacy. The meaning of words being assigned by us as humans plays a role in Steve Pinker's lecture on human nature and social relations that I discussed earlier.  Since we, as humans, have assigned-- and continue to assign--meanings to words, it only makes sense that, by taking a closer look at language, we can understand aspects of human nature. Pinker does this by looking at implied meanings such as what lies behind the old phrase, "Would you like to come up and take a look at my etchings."

I also looked at the video itself that was being presented. The video is a great representation of the potential offered in the digital humanities. It combines aural with visual stimulus to create a thoroughly engaging, educational tool. This visual and aural combo goes right along with Walter Ong's idea that we are a visual culture: the idea that we think of words in terms of the words actually being spelled out visible on the page as opposed to words as sounds. When a word is a sound only, as it is in oral cultures, it becomes an experience (or an event or occurrence, as Ong says) in space and time. The audible sound, unlike text, is not locked into space and time, however, because it then become subject to the memory of the listener.

Memory then is one of the biggest aspects that separates oral and literate culture for a few different reasons. The first is that oral cultures have to rely much more heavily on memory because that is their only mode of transfer of history, ritual, and, ultimately, culture. Literate cultures don't need to put such a strong emphasis on memory because their information is all written down and stored. All they (we) have to do is pick up a book and "look-up" the information we need. Since oral cultures have "nowhere" to look, they store it all internally so that they can reproduce it later. They do this by using mnemonic devices, something familiar to the literate world, but not used in the same ways (i.e. the using of mnemonic devices in the learning of musical intervals as opposed to memorizing a poem, which is almost a type of muscle memory).

Another difference is the community that memory creates. While memory is an individual process,  oral cultures relied heavily on communities to help remember stories. A really good example of this is at the end of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury where some of the characters have memorized entire books in order to preserve the books history and message. In oral cultures, the stories were meant to be told and retold to communities to keep them fresh and to pass them on. In the tellings, the speaker would hone his own craft with the practice while the listeners (and future storytellers) would build their own stocks of mnemonic devices and figure out how to use them effectively. The entire process of storytelling and preserving history was entirely based on the concept of a strong community.

According to Ong, individuals in literate cultures are more separated. Not necessarily isolated, but separated because of the words themselves. The word, once written down, has been given a feeling of finality and "closure." The word becomes something separate from the author and is then read by the reader, who is also separated from it. The author assigned his own meaning to the word, but the reader is then propelled into an internal dialogue with the word and himself on trying to understand it. As I said in one post, "writing... internalizes the experience of giving and receiving information." This, Ong says, is why literacy raises consciousness. It forces the individual to ponder all the different aspects of meaning and being in words and self.

(Taking a breath.)(Drinking some water.)

Still awake?







Ong also introduces the idea of the secondary orality. Since he wrote his book in 1982, his ideas of technology were the television, radio, and telephone. High tech for almost 30 years ago. But now we have the internet. Now we have iPads. Now we have social networking. His view has not changed too much, but it definitely has a whole new arsenal of toys to play with.

The second orality, to Ong, borrowed from the primary oral cultures, but applied the technology of the literate cultures. I agree with that idea. Primary orality in a literate society is simply not possible. The frames of thought are completely different and one finds it hard, if not impossible, to relate to the other. With secondary orality, the technology is able to capture some parts of the primary orality and make it available to the literate culture. My example of this is pretty much every video I posted, but with special attention to the Grateful Dead concert and Taylor Mali's spoken word performance. While these things are not the same, despite their aural characteristics, as information in an oral culture, that is what we have to use in order to maintain our own tendencies toward orality.

That is also, in effect, my main argument. By rediscovering the concept of community found in oral cultures and by utilizing the introspection that raises consciousness made prevalent in literate cultures, the digital humanities are putting us on the threshold of a new consciousness. We are an increasingly socially based culture. With new so many ways to connect to people like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, smartphones, Skype, etc. and all sorts of new technology to access them, the world has gotten smaller and we have gotten closer. People who have the same or opposing thoughts and ideas can interact with each other and have discourse in order to grow in their own consciousnesses. The presentation of information itself is changing and becoming more interactive. The last video of that new eBook for the iPad is a good example. It combines oral aspects, documentary footage, and access to other information outside of the book itself. That sort of interaction with information has never been available before and has only come out in the extremely recent past. What can we do with it in the future? While it is still too early to tell, rest assured we are in for serious changes in the way we obtain, process, and broadcast information.

I haven't given any answers or predictions with regard to my argument, and I don't think I will be able to anytime soon. There's a lot more research to be done-- a lot more exploring to experience. I have only scratched the surface (if that) and have already missed a lot and excluded more. I want to keep this up though, and fully document where we are going as a culture and as a consciousness. It will be interesting and I'm glad that I'm along for the ride. Maybe I'll take one of the wheels one day. That's a scary thought.

For now though, goodbye and goodnight.

Coolness

So I don't get thoroughly impressed easily. Technology is usually what does it for me, but since there has been such a huge explosion in just my lifetime I tend to expect technology to impress me. But this thing is just really really cool.

Okay so a question for book-nerds: Is that not the coolest thing you've ever seen? While I'm still a strong proponent for a traditional book and all the nostalgia and emotion that comes with one, the eBooks really are taking over. And technology like this makes me think that it might not be so bad.

While there is, what appears to be, a substantial oral component to this technology (over an hour of documentary footage!), I don't think this applies as directly to my study on orality as the spoken word poetry. This seems to be more pertaining to digital humanities today. Even if it doesn't apply anywhere at all I just wanted to show it because it's bad ass.

It could pertain to the orality study in a certain way though. Ong talks about the finality of the word. Once the word is on print it becomes separate, and acts as a separation, from author and reader. It becomes a "thing" instead of an event. Technology like this could totally change that viewpoint or, at least, modify its dimensions. Now the word is interactive with information available to the reader immediately. The possibilities are incredible.

Spoken Words

Dig this.

I've just recently been getting into Spoken Word poetry, and I think that nothing better exemplifies the continuance of orality. In spoken word, the piece is usually memorized and performed for a crowd. It usually has some kind of rhythm, but to put any sort of definite limitations on it is to go against the freedom that spoken word embodies.

Since the piece is memorized, it is subject to memory (DUH). This is a factor that can change the performance. Not only that, it is subject-- to a degree-- to the audience. Differently levels of audience participation can change the way a poet delivers a line or puts inflection on a certain word. This added influence from the audience goes back to what Ong was saying about the Lincoln-Douglas debates. While they were speaking to a crowd of around 15,000, the audience was loudly voicing their approval or disgust. There was an interplay between audience and speaker, which Ong says is important for orality. Listen to these two performances of the same piece by Taylor Mali. Listen to differences in his voice, but also listen to differences in his audience. Notice the difference in his wardrobe and what that could entail. But, most importantly, listen to his poetry.

Quite a few changes taking place here. The first video is much more subdued. His dress is classier. His delivery is calmer until the end. In the second video, he starts out almost screaming. Sweat is dripping off of him, or rolling down to what looks like sweat pants. The audience is very clearly different here. They are loud and responsive with laughter and expressions of shock and joy. In the first one, there is some laughing, but, until the end, they are generally quiet.

This shows how Ong's secondary orality differs from primary orality and literacy. It differs from literacy in that it is a completely aural experience. It differs from primary orality because it is recorded, which is one way that it is actually similar to literacy. Another similarity to literacy, and departure from primary orality, is the visual aspect. That, in effect, is my argument: the way we learn and process information as a visual culture has to be accounted for through digital means in order to preserve and recreate any aspect of the oral culture.

While this is a big departure from the oral culture, it is the way that we have to come to terms with. The days of oral storytelling to preserve history in the way Native American, or Greeks, or other primarily oral cultures understood it, are over. But we can still celebrate it and learn from it and define our own knowledge by turning toward our digital technology.

I think these videos are really good representations of how the digital humanities can perpetuate orality. The spoken word artists are the modern storytellers, and now their stories can be told and retold by anyone in the world.

Two Stories

So I was thinking about the Grateful Dead concert I posted and how that was a continuance of the oral tradition. Ong would say no, because the fact that it's recorded makes it basically a type of print. But I think that that is just part of the secondary orality-- it's what we have to work with. Storytelling, concerts, and conversations can only take place in the true primary oral sense if they are experienced in person. The second orality has to capture the opportunities technology has to offer in order to manifest itself.

SO, talking about secondary orality in the world today. I think a really good way to look at it is through the use of musical recordings and concerts. When an artist performs a song in a different style, or covers a song from a another artist, they are carrying on the message of that song with their own added flavors. This is very similar to the way oral cultures performed storytelling. The audience would listen closely, learn the story, and then retell it in their own ways.

A good example is the song Gin and Juice by Snoop Dog and a cover done by The Gourds. All you need to hear is the first few lyrics, but if you can listen up to the chorus it is awesome (Explicit Lyric Warning):

 Did you find some differences? Stylistically the song has changed completely, but the core of the song is still exactly the same. Think about what this means. Snoop Dogg rapping on stage is going to attract a completely different demographic compared to a country bluegrass band from Austin, Texas. The different styles of storytelling make the story more available. Does that make one version better than another? That isn't even an argument. The fact is that it is two storytellers doing what they do in two different ways.

Digital Classroom

Check out this article from The Chronicle of High Education.

There's definitely some more digital humanity business going on. I feel like this wouldn't be as applicable toward the idea that the D.H. can recapture the oral culture. I actually think this particular instance is working against it. While college classroom lectures aren't exactly what Ong had in mind when he discussed primary orality, they are still a form of primarily oral communication with the opportunity for discourse.

I don't necessarily agree with the fact that traditional classrooms are on the way out. I can see how they would be diminishing, but it seems as if there will always be enough students who either want or have to come to class. Personally, I have a hard time taking internet classes. There are too many distractions and the disease of procrastination sets in strong. I'm much better in a classroom setting, even if I don't want to show up all the time.

Even so, it's another picture of what the D.H. can do. In speaking of, I got REALLY excited about this:
Berkeley Podcast. It's every lecture of certain classes offered at Berkeley! Pretty sweet little set up here. While I think that this might make students in the classroom feel less inclined to go to class, it is a really cool thing for everyone else who can't afford Berkeley but want to explore different educational settings and experience that kind of class. Why, yes. I am a nerd.

Digital Library

So I've been wanting to post this for awhile. It's not directly related to my aforementioned thesis-ish statement, but it's an informative video. It's a part of the Technology, Education, Design (TED) conferences. I think that these conferences, along with the RSA and others, are brilliant examples of what the digital humanities can offer in terms of education opportunities. More on that later...

 So Brewster Kahle has developed a feasible way in which to digitize all of the written material in the Library of Congress and one day... THE WORLD. I expect some diabolical laughter at that point. Not only that, but it would all be free! (more diabolical laughter).

This is a good example of what the digital humanities can do. His website, The Internet Archive, has everything from Walt Whitman to the Grateful Dead to 16th century prose. How cool is that? The ability to access all of that information from one place... for FREE.

To tie it in, this is also a good example of the preservation of the oral culture-- the video and the archive that is. The video because the TED conference is set up as a series of talks in which people with ideas get onstage and basically just go off about their ideas. Mostly an oral function with a captive audience. The archive by capturing interviews and concerts, such as the Grateful Dead. The Dead was what would come to be known as a "jam band." A whole lot of their stage time at shows was spent jamming out and improvising around songs they already knew. Sound familiar? This meant that no performance was ever exactly alike. However, now Kahle has them stored, forever sealing their permanence in the world of digital print. Just because there's nothing overly fun on this blog, I'm leaving this post with something tasty...

Secondary Orality and a Thesis-ish statement

So we're about to say "Goodbye" to Mr. Ong. Been fun.

I left the last post mentioning Ong's idea of what he called the "secondary orality." In a sense, Ong is directly addressing the onset of the digital humanities which, in 1982, were just beginning to take form with groups like Project Gutenberg.

Ong's argument is that the new orality (using telephones, radio, email, and some computer systems at the time) is similar, but still different, to the primary oral cultures. He says that it brings back the sense of the group and of community that writing had no part of. We are now turned toward each other, having discourse with other human beings, as opposed to having our heads buried in unanswerable text. The reason for this, however, is because we have already seen the inside of ourselves. Therein lies the difference: the secondary orality is just as introspective as literary culture, because now we must examine ourselves in the context of everyone else, not just through dead words on a page.

Ong suggests that the new orality has replaced the old, but not without borrowing some of the same concepts. Our presidents can speak directly to us, similar to his example of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. But now the information flows one way. The conversation is not really a conversation at all since there is no way for immediate reply, unlike the presidential debates in which a throng of people expressed their agreements or disagreements at the source.

So how does this all tie in?


We live in time vastly different even from 1982. Ong's idea of the new orality creating a stronger social connection (he cites Marshall McLuhan's Global Village) has increased exponentially. Now Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, and social media dominate our lives. The one way media sources of radio, television, etc. are not the same. Now with technology like the iPhone, Skype, and chat features, the relationship is two-way in many cases.

Okay so... thesis? Maybe? Well here is a claim anyway:  Through the use of social media and the technology behind the Digital Humanities, it is possible--maybe inevitable-- that aspects of oral culture will manifest themselves in modern culture.

This is already seen in those RSA videos. While based primarily off of text and visual stimulus, there is still an oral component. The video provides the viewers with their mnemonic devices so that they will remember it when trying to relate the video to someone else.

So lets explore the digital culture.

Got Some More Ong

Okay, so I'm going to try to get away from Ong after another post or two, but it is really important that I make a strong connection between the oral and the literate. I'll try to do some condensing...

In Chapter 4 of Orality and Literacy, Ong solidifies the idea that we are visual learners in a literate culture, and, by seeing the word on the page, we have put a sense of finality on ourselves that is extremely hard-- if not impossible-- to shake off. That sense of finality is what is hazardous to the primary oral culture because it is the process of naming with something physical that is permanent. He uses Plato's dialogue in Phaedrus to make an example of how an oral culture often views a literate culture. Essentially, Plato says (or rather, has Socrates say) four things:

1) Writing... is inhuman, pretending to establish outside the mind what in reality can be only in the mind. It is a thing, a manufactured product. The same of course is said of computers. (I want to come back to that last statement shortly).

2) Writing destroys memory...Writing weakens the mind. By relying on an external source for their internal deficiencies will, according to Plato, make people forgetful. Ong makes the same comparison of children using pocket calculators for multiplication tables. The calculators relieve you of mental work that keeps you in shape.

3) a written text is basically unresponsive. If you ask a question of someone who just said something to you, you will ideally get a response. Written text just stars mockingly back at you. Ong says that the same principle is said of computers "Garbage in, garbage out."

4) Plato's Socrates also holds it against writing that the written word cannot defend itself as the natural spoken word can: real speech and thought always exist essentially in a context of give-and-take between real persons. Writing is passive, out of it, in an unreal, unnatural world. So are computers (79).

Ong is making quite a few statements about computers here, if you haven't noticed. Now he did write this in 1982, but he knew what he was saying. He presents writing as a form of technology. It is a part of our social progress and, therefore, our progress in consciousness. He argues that just as writing "heightens consciousness," so will computers in a different way.

The way writing heightens consciousness is that it internalizes the experience of giving and receiving information. There is a separation between the author and the text and the text from the reader because the reader isn't usually there after the author writes.

But written words sharpen analysis, for the individual words are called on to do more. To make yourself clear without gesture, without facial expression, without intonation, without a real hearer, you have to foresee circumspectly all possible meanings a statement may have for any possible reader in any possible situation... (104)

By separating the knower from the known (Havelock 1963), writing makes possible increasingly articulate introspectivity, opening the psyche as never before not only to the external objective world quite distinct from itself but also to the interior self against whom the objective world is set (105).

 So what does that mean? Basically that the act of writing words, from an oral culture's point of view, sets them in that finality I keep talking about. That means the writer has to delve into their own understanding of what that word means and make sure that, along with everything arranged around it, the word is used in its absolutely correct context. Even then, the reader is often not around the author, so the reader may read into a different context.

All of that though-- for the writer and the reader-- is a growth in consciousness.

Ong also argues (condensing Chapter 5) that print is an even further departure from oral culture. The sense of closure in print is even worse than with writing. "Print encloses thought in thousands of copies of a work of exactly the same visual and physical consistency" (132)."

The next big thing Ong argues really ties it in:  second orality-- what's to come after, or as an off-shoot, of literacy.

Ong's Orality Part Deux

Okay, so now that we've laid out a little ground work about what an oral and literate culture is, and how they differ, it's time to delve a little deeper.

The third chapter of Orality and Literacy is entitled "Some Psychoanalytics of Orality." In it, he begins to define the way the primary oral cultures process information and language. His first example throws back to the idea that we are visual learners:

Try to imagine a culture where no one has ever 'looked up' anything... the expression 'to look up something' is an empty phrase: it would have no conceivable meaning. Without writing, words as such have no visual presence, even when the objects they represent are visual. They are sounds. You might 'call' them back -- 'recall' them. But there is nowhere to 'look' for them... They are occurrences, events (30).

 That's an interesting concept to try to wrap your mind around. No only do the actions of the words we use to describe the visual way we handle information-- 'to look up'-- but the word itself implies visual stimulus. The last line is particularly interesting. To describe a word, but more specifically an utterance, as an event. An occurrence. That is something completely forlorn to our way of thinking. What that implies is that it can be missed or looked over (not looked... see? it's inescapable! misheard or not heard or missed). If a piece of the story is left out, that adds to the subjectivity of the story that gets passed on to other storytellers in other regions and so on. That will be addressed more in a later post.

Well, without the visual, how is it that an oral culture can learn and, more importantly, retain information? The same way someone memorizes a poem, or a guitar player memorizes scales, or the way you finally learned all the words to that song on the radio so you won't be mumbling every other word:  mnemonic patterns.

In order to fully remember all the stories, which are all the histories and folklore, in an oral culture, the listeners would use "heavily rhythmic, balanced patterns, in repetitions or antithesis," and other devices to help recall. Another aspect is the use of cliches which, as Ong says,

can be 'looked up' in books of sayings, but in oral cultures they are not occasional. They are incessant. They form the substance of thought itself. Thought in any extended form is impossible without them, for it consists in them (35).

It's almost the exact same concept as musicians training their ears. For various intervals on between pitches, there are certain mnemonic devices that can be used. A tritone, or a diminished 5th, which would be a C to a Gb, is the open interval of the song "Maria" from West Side Story, or the interval used throughout The Simpson's theme song. By comparing each interval with a familiar song, it gives a frame of reference to the player's ear that makes learning much easier. But I mean really, who needs more of a reason to remember Natalie Wood?


Ong says the understanding of mnemonic thought provides a baseline to understanding other aspects of their thought processes. He categorizes characteristics of their thoughts and expressions in nine different ways. For the sake of time I will just list them, but I may come back and expound later.

1. Expression is additive rather than subordinative.
2. It is aggregative rather than analytic.
3. It tends to be redundant or "copious."
4. There is a tendency for it to be conservative.
5. Out of necessity, thought is conceptualized and then expressed with relatively close reference to the human lifeworld.
6. Expression is agonistically toned.
7. It is empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced.
8. It is Homeostatic.
9. It is situational rather than abstract.

These aspects of the primary oral culture are characteristic of their patters of thought and expressions. They, as Bingham says, "contribute to the saliency, and, consequently, enhance the memorability of an utterance." Instead of relying on specific words or, obviously, a text, the narrator tries to mesh the story with his framework of proverbs, maxims, and cliches that he has picked up over the years. This way, like the musical mnemonic devices, he has a frame of reference he can refer back to on the spot if ever he loses his place or forgets a line.

Write or Ong?

Alright. It's the home stretch. Time to get the hands dirty.

In the last post, I ended by trying to make an analogy for the connection between orality, literacy, and the digital humanities. The RSA video is a good example of how the digital humanities can be utilized in the future for educational purposes, and I'll talk more about that later.

Now it's time to talk about the Grand Master of oral studies:  Dr. Walter Ong. Ong wrote a book in 1982 called Orality and Literacy, which is his study on what happens to culture as it moves from a primarily oral culture to primarily literate one. For you language, post-colonial studies, oral communications, or other assorted nerds out there, it is incredibly interesting. But, for everyone who doesn't have time to read the whole thing, there's a very thorough review and summary by Art Bingham. I'll be taking some quotes from the book itself and the summary. The summary is using the 1988 reprint whereas I am using the 1982 original (citations, if necessary, at the bottom).

I suppose I should define, in my best terms, what makes an "oral" or a "literate" culture. When Ong speaks of an "oral" culture-- which is the way this project will coincide with it-- he means a culture that has never had any experience with written language, even its own. A literate culture, in turn, is one that is based primarily off the use of written text as its main mode of communication, education, and general transfer of information.

I'm just going to take Chapter 1 at the moment to give some direction. He begins by defining some basics about what an oral culture is and what a literate culture is, thereby setting up some boundaries for each to be studied. A few interesting quotes I found:

Ferdinand de Saussure...called attention to the primacy of oral speech, which underpins all verbal communication, as well as to the persistent tendency... to think of writing as the basic form of language...he thought of writing as a kind of complement to oral speech, not as a transformer of verbalization (5).

Language study in all but recent decades has focused on written texts rather than on orality for a readily assignable reason: the relationship of study itself to writing...Human beings in primary oral cultures, those untouched by writing in any form, learn a great deal and possess and practice great wisdom, but they do not 'study.' They learn by apprenticeship... by listening, by repeating what they hear... not by study in the strict sense (8-9).

In the beginning, Ong lays out some basics on how oral cultures operate with information. He brings in Saussure, who, as we've said, is important for the way in which WE (as a literate culture) view language and, as the next few quotes say, "words" in general.

 Writing makes 'words' appear similar to things because we think of words as the visible marks signaling words to decoders: we can see and touch such inscribed 'words' in texts and books. Written words are residue. Oral tradition has no such residue or deposit. When an often-told story is not actually being told, all that exists of it is the potential in certain human beings to tell it (11).

 Though words are grounded in oral speech, writing tyrannically locks them into a visual field forever (12).

Here, Ong introduces an idea that he goes back to in later chapters: the idea that, as literate cultures, we become almost completely visually based as opposed to aurally based. He challenges the reader to think of the word "nevertheless" for more than 60 seconds without thinking of the spelling out of the word itself. I couldn't do it either.

The visual part of our learning has lasting implications though, especially in response to the RSA video. Think about it... while that video has a strong oral component to it, it was still mostly visual! Drawings to represent the ideas and even text being written in-- "tyrannically" locked to the screen and your consciousness.

Ong's last point in the chapter is that the literate culture, right at the start, has a hard time even comprehending the concept of a primary oral culture. We always try to relate the oral culture in terms of the literate culture with terms like "oral literature" which he says is like describing a horse as a "wheelless automobile." "In the end," says Ong," horses are only what they are not."

He also goes on to say that literacy is the natural evolution of an oral culture. It slowly becomes aware of the possibilities that lie in embracing literacy. The problem becomes leaving so many aspects of a culture behind. He makes the argument, however, that "Literacy can be used to reconstruct for ourselves the pristine human consciousness which was not literate at all - at least to reconstruct this consciousness pretty well, though not perfectly" (15).

It is the leaving behind of orality to embrace literacy, and in turn the leaving of literacy to embrace digitization that I will be studying.

Works cited (just in case):
Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Methuen, 1982. Print.